Virtual Star Embryology
by thesunlitmaid
Summary: The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for upon the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men or of earth's gods...
1. Let the Games Begin

_**Let the Games Begin**_

Out in the dark, a man walked.

He was a handsome devil. He had a thick mop of dark, curly, silky-looking hair that framed his softly-contoured face, deep-brown eyes, and full, pouting lips. He was tall, thin, and dressed stylishly, in a black leather jacket, scuffed-up jeans, and snakeskin boots. His voice, when he spoke, was warm and rich, and he liked to laugh, and his walk was a leisurely sort of shuffle.

But there was something about him that was sort of… off. Nobody could quite say what it was. Perhaps it was that, if one stared at him for just a split-second too long, he would _change_. His eyes would glimmer crimson; his beautiful smile would become far too wide, and contain far, _far_ too many sharp and jagged teeth; his rich, warm laughter would become unnerving, cold, cruel; when he stepped on the grass in the city park, the grass would wither and die. Of course, that was silly, people would tell themselves.

That was what they would _tell_ themselves, but they didn't believe it. They didn't believe it at all.

He shuffled to a stop, and he grinned, flashing too-sharp teeth. They shone in the moonlight, and nearby, a rat foraging for food squealed in fear; its little heart stopped, and it died, shuddering and shivering.

He was unutterably, unbearably bored.

Time for a game, then.

The grin on his handsome face grew wider and more terrible.

He closed his eyes and looked, searching through the darkness of the city up ahead. In the sleeping city, a million dreams suddenly turned to nightmares, and a blood-colored eye looked through their horrors, surveying coolly and carefully. He heard angry whispers and madness mantras and incoherent screams of horror and revulsion as he roamed through the darkness of dreams and visions, surveying it with a vicious curiosity sparkling in his eyes.

The pretty young nurse, home from a grueling, thankless day at work, dreamed of her patients, quiet and released from their pain at last. She had cured them, all right. Nurse Billings' medicine had made them all better, that wonderful mix of succinylcholine. A wonder drug, that. Nobody would ever find out. Nobody would ever know about her tender mercies. In her sleep, she smiled and rolled over onto her side, satisfied. She wished that she could have set her patients free.

_No. The man shook his head. Keep moving on._

The old man whimpered in his sleep as he dreamed of the gentleman in the black shroud, cowering. He knew that soon, he would die. His ticker would just give in, call it a day, and finally, the gentleman in black would drag him, screaming, into whatever awaited the dead. He dreamed of being dragged away by enormous dogs with forked tongues and ugly grins on their horrible faces, their teeth sinking into his bones and pulling him apart, dragging him bit by bit to Hell. He wished he had the power to defeat the man in black. In his sleep, he rolled over and curled into a ball, whimpering.

_No. Not what I'm looking for. Keep moving on._

The young woman dreamed of a long, high wall. It was white, and it stretched in any direction as far as the eye could see. She sat with her forehead resting against the cold and unyielding stone of the wall. Beyond that wall, she could hear life. Beyond that wall was a world for lovers, for friends, for people who had possibility and potential, the ability to make something useful out of themselves. That was why she had been exiled on this side of the great white wall. She wished she could have joined the world on the other side. But that was quite impossible. She had tried. She belonged on this side. Lonely. Alone. Devoid of purpose or use.

_Yes. You'll do nicely. _The man grinned to himself and stepped into her world.

_A man appeared, a man whose eyes burned like twin stars._ She tossed and turned in her cot as she slept. _His touch was soft and comforting, and he brushed her cheek affectionately. He whispered to her in his smooth, rich voice, though she couldn't understand what he was saying, and his full lips brushed her cheek as his long, thin fingers brushed a lock of dirty-blond hair behind her ear._ Laurie Dalton sighed and turned over again, burying her head in the makeshift pillow. _The man pressed a wide, long-fingered hand to her chest and squeezed at it, scraping her skin a little bit. A symbol appeared, although she did not understand it. The wall disappeared with a wave of the man's hand; he took her hand in his and dragged her onto the other side, into the world of purpose._

When she woke up the next morning, she recalled only hazy details of the dream, but felt a great comfort upon thinking of it and trying to remember further details. Something warm and soft seemed to burn within her heart, and it made her feel better for a short time. She remembered the wall and a man with beautiful curly hair and deep brown eyes. He had dragged her beyond the wall. She wondered what it meant. Probably nothing. Dreams didn't mean anything. Not the ones you had when you were asleep and not the ones you had for the future. Just a load of meaningless brain-scratch, was all. Much like herself, actually. Meaningless, purposeless. Months had passed, the world had turned, and still, she found herself lacking in any purpose or meaning. She had always been of the opinion that life was what you made of it, but for the past two years, it had been rather the opposite; life was making her its bitch. Her older brother had graduated college, married, and gotten a job as a pediatric oncologist, treating children's cancers; he was good with children, and he was an excellent doctor. Good for him. Laurie, meanwhile, had obtained a GED, became a waitress at a greasy spoon, and had found herself without that job when the diner closed. That had been nine months ago. She hadn't been able to find another job since, although she'd applied to everything that came across, followed up, and done everything else you were supposed to do in order to get a job. The world seemed to have simply forgotten about her entirely, no matter how much she tried to proclaim her presence.

And so she felt like fading away. Maybe the white, blank world of her side of the wall wouldn't have been so bad. Again, a brief flicker of the handsome man from her dream floated across her mind. If only it were that easy.

She had considered college. There were complications, though--such as the fact that she hadn't a clue what she wanted to do with her life. She simply wasn't _interested_ enough in anything anymore. Her childhood dreams had drained away like water through a sieve; she simply didn't have the energy to create any new dreams. It all looked equally black and bleak in the future; it was all she could foresee.

Had once wanted to be a veterinarian, but she simply wasn't very good with animals, no matter how much she liked them. Plus, she was afraid of blood and needles, even if those needles were going into another creature entirely; she had gone on a job-shadow in high school and fainted when the person she was following had to sedate an animal for surgery.

Had once wanted to simply marry and become a housewife, perhaps even have a child or two. But that wouldn't happen. She was chillingly convinced of that. No, she was stuck forever in the damning twilight of Just Friends and Just Like a Little Sister. Although Laurie was twenty, she had not yet held hands with anybody. Every man she had ever asked out had flatly turned her down, and nobody had ever asked her out. It made her feel disgusting and disgusted.

She had a lot of Just-Friends once, but now, even those had all vanished into the darkest reaches of adulthood. Gotten married, moved away, found new jobs, went to college. Alone again, naturally. She was getting used to it, but that didn't mean that she liked it at all. She was afraid of being alone.

Had once wanted to work on a farm (she'd even been in the FFA in high school), but farm work was harder and harder to come by in the age of industrialization and advance of the service-based economy. The farming communes had vanished with the cynicism of the 1980s and the backlash against the hippies and counterculture revolutionaries, who she'd secretly used to admire. There had been a period of about four years where she'd been nuts about it, and for that short time, she'd felt at peace with the universe at particular points.

Increasingly, though, she felt as though the wall from her dream was almost a literal being, something that had slid into real life somehow--something that cut her off from the rest of the world. Of course. Why not? She didn't deserve to be there on the sunny side of life. It just wasn't a world for people like her. It was a simple truth. Accepting it was as simple as embracing the truth that the sun rose every morning.

Perhaps it should have bothered Laurie more that she was thinking like this, but she paid it almost no mind. She used to think a lot about a lot of things, but she found herself thinking less recently; it hurt less when you tried not to think about things that were getting you down, and the entire _world _was getting her down, every miserable minute of living in this place. She wasn't upset, though. Just couldn't get the energy up for all that.

It didn't upset her that she couldn't muster the energy to be upset about anything anymore. Not much use in it, she supposed. She didn't care much anymore. Laurie used to care a lot about a lot of things, but she'd found herself caring less and less as each day ticked past. As everything she had was stripped away from her, she had found herself slipping into the warm, numbing embrace of apathy and ennui. She just felt as thought she were floating. Drifting away. And for once in her life, she felt sort of like a swan. Floating away into a chilly blue heaven… It was comforting, the warm embrace of apathy.

The only thing that penetrated that warm shield was the rain--the soft, entrancing music of its fall, the overpowering scent, the gentle touch of the cold water against the bare skin of her arms.

It was a long way down to the pavement. Briefly, she wondered how it would feel to just jump. To just let go and drift away one last time, and be granted the comfort of oblivion. Wasn't as though the world would mourn the loss, was it? The world never cried for the forgotten or the lost. She twisted her hands around the railing and stared at the pavement several stories below, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully.

"Now, I don't know you, and for all I know, I'd be lying if I told you that you've got everything to live for." Laurie yelped in surprise at the sound of the voice. She whipped around, her back now to the five-story drop just beyond the railing, her arms curling around the railing. The person who had spoke to her was a man--dressed in a black leather jacket and scuffed-up jeans; curiously, he didn't appear to be at all wet from walking in the rain, although he had no umbrella. He advanced, hands in his pockets, and leaned with his back against the railing as well, grinning at Laurie, whose jaw dropped. He looked like… just like… _like the man from her dream._ "But I'd like to _give _you something to live for, Laurie." He had a warm and friendly voice; hearing it was like sitting by a fire with a blanket around one's shoulders and holding a cup of hot cocoa with tiny marshmallows in your hands; it made one feel warm and safe all over, even in the cold autumn rain. She didn't say anything, owlishly blinking her soft blue eyes at him. That couldn't… it couldn't be him, could it? Fleetingly, a thought came to her--_a guardian angel?_--but she dismissed it. Mystical nonsense. She tried not to hold with that sort of thing.

Finally, she merely squeaked; immediately, she felt silly, wishing she could've said something cool and interesting, something that could've portrayed her as sophisticated or grown-up or at least pretty cool, to impress him, to make him think that she was somebody worth helping. The handsome man laughed richly, but not unkindly.

"Come on, you can talk to me. I won't bite. Unless you're into all that." Another rich, loud laugh. She looked into his deep eyes, and for a moment, they seemed to flicker red. That was silly, though, wasn't it? People didn't have red eyes. "I've come to you for a reason, Laurie. What's say we go and discuss it over some tea? I'll tell you your future and how we're gonna make it together." She opened her mouth to protest, but he put a finger to her lips, quieting her. "I won't take 'no' for an answer." A charming, entrancing grin spread across his face, and he put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him. Laurie squeaked again, afraid, but consented to being led away, back down the stairs towards the streets.

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They wound up in a cozy little café, sitting across from one another in a back corner table; he was sipping from a tall glass of chocolate milk with a sad-looking puff of whipped cream on top of it. She had hot green tea, and was indeed feeling warm and comfortable down to her very bones after drinking some, though perhaps some of it was due to the company of the exceedingly nice man. Their corner was dimly, but charmingly, illuminated by a green candle in a little glass globe, and the glass globe sat inside of a wreath made from small plastic pine boughs. She'd been very quiet so far, and the man didn't seem to mind much; he would hum a little bit, or sing snatches of songs under his breath--he seemed to quite like Rolling Stones songs--or just one particular song, it seemed. She smiled across the table, a little more confident with the warm tea inside her, and he grinned in return. It was a Cheshire cat's grin, and seemed--fleetingly--to have far, far too many teeth in it. She blinked, and the illusion was shaken away. His teeth were perfectly-aligned and perfectly white once more. Perfectly handsome.

"Drying out?" he asked pleasantly. She nodded. "That's good." He brushed a stray silky black curl of hair out of his eyes. "Very good," he repeated idly. He took a sip of his milk and licked his lips. "I bet you're wondering why I brought you in out of the rain like this. Aren't you?" She nodded, having slightly suspected an ulterior motive. Still, it was nice to be treated that way by a stranger, even if he had some reason for it other than simple kindness. Nobody had treated her so kindly in years, if not her entire life--not even her family. "Yes, I knew you were. You're a curious girl, and that's a good thing. Well, my dear…" His grin widened. "…I am the man of your dreams."

A flash back to the previous night's dream; she gasped softly, and hoped he didn't notice.

"No… not even that. I am the answer to your _prayers_." His voice became a deep, silky purr. "I can give you whatever you want. Whatever you need, at the very depth of your soul. It's in my power to give it to you. I could give you the knowledge of all the worlds in all of the universe. I could give you passionate lovers. Loyal subjects. Servants to cater to your every whim. Extravagant riches. _Empires_. Aeons. Entire precious _worlds_. I could give you _power_, beyond your wildest dreams, and with that power, you could destroy whatever lies in your way and rebuild the world as you see fit. A paradise for the forgotten… justice for the lost…" One of his long, thin fingers gently stroked her cheek; he was so close now that she could feel his warm breath against her skin. His breath smelled sweet but somehow _rusty_… almost as if it smelled of old, tacky blood. A shiver ran through her skin, through her entire body, and seemed to stick in her throat like a knife of ice. "You are the one I have _chosen _to do this. You are _mine_." His long, thin fingers brushed against the collar of her shirt; her eyes half-closed, and she felt the warmth that she had felt in that dream. His hand cupped her chin, tilting her face upward slightly, so that she looked into his eyes--red? brown? Whatever color they were, they were beautiful; she could have looked into them forever. "So I think we oughta have ourselves an understanding." She nodded eagerly and listened very intently. "I'm going to slip the keys to the kingdom into your hands. I'll give you immeasurable power--the ability to shape new worlds. But after I give you this power, I'm going to work you hard, you understand. All I need from you is your word--a promise that you will not fall asleep on the job, that you'll stand by me every step of the way. Promise me… and I give it all over to you. Your new life. How does that sound?"

There was hardly any decision to make, as far as she was concerned; given the choice between continuing to sink further into failure and the chance to become important to somebody… what else was there to do?

"Cross my heart and hope to die," she said eagerly, breathless with excitement.

"Really, now?" he asked, grinning. Distantly, it occurred to her that the teeth in his big, charming grin were awfully sharp-looking, sort of like a cat's fangs. She briefly wondered how they'd gotten that way.

"Yes," she said louder, more confidently. "I'll do anything for you; we most definitely have a deal."

"There's a girl." His grin widened even further, seeming to take up an unnatural amount of his face. "Take this. It'll be the mark of our covenant. That will be your power. Not to mention I think it'd look better on you than it would me. I'm not really the jewelry sort, see." He waggled his long, thin fingers, and a small, clear crystal marble appeared. It glided and slipped between his fingers expertly, and her eyes followed it closely and curiously; it came to rest on the very tip of his left index finger. "Take it," he repeated.

She took the little marble from his hand; as soon as her fingers touched it, she felt something like fire run through her heart. She gave a soft cry, suddenly dizzy, and clutched the crystal tightly in her hand. A brush of the man's long fingers seemed to restore her easily, righting everything with the world again.

His words still rang and echoed in her mind. Shaping a new world… a paradise for the forgotten… power… but more importantly, _purpose, _structure, direction. She would be doing an important job for somebody; she had been _chosen_ for it. She liked that, liked it a lot. A promise, a covenant, a vow. Laurie smiled. A new life, a second chance, given to her by a guardian angel in a leather jacket.

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_People_. Pft. They were only too happy to proudly march towards disaster when given their orders, weren't they? He got the feeling that humans liked being lied to; they swallowed enormous lies like water, and were easily led astray by the smallest and simplest of tricks. People rarely questioned his motives or purposes, especially the ones who fancied themselves to be good people; they trusted him easily. The wicked and cruel were far more paranoid and harder to manipulate--though it was a fun and interesting challenge that he often played anyway.

But he had selected his pawn, and soon, he would make the first move in his favorite game, although he had many that he liked to play. The game of havoc, the game of stars…

Yes.

_Let the games begin_.


	2. Night Life

_**Night Life**_

Night came, and it was crawling, scuttling across the worlds purposefully. People do not think that night has a sound. But they are wrong. Night is, in fact, _incredibly_ loud. The sound of darkness is the sound of the universe as it moves, ages, dies, and crumbles. People are fortunate indeed that they have carefully learned to tune out the sounds of the night. Soothing lullabies promise children that the sun will always come out the next morning, like it's some kind of absolute certainty. Civilization is the lullaby of existence--our way of coping with night sounds.

The night devours whatever stands in its path. Stars. Light. Heat. Planets. Worlds. Empires. Civilizations, scrabbling out their existences, fancying themselves advanced and important, crying out to the increasingly empty universe, boasting of their petty triumphs, such as art and science and culture--getting only silence and darkness in response. Night crawls ever onward, blind and uncaring, feeding mindlessly upon existence, bringing a breathtaking expanse of pure nothing and leaving only shadows of what once was. And even then, shadows eventually fade away.

Out in the darkness, in thinning places full of emptiness, creatures lived. They were of the old breed, the true children of the night. Older than humans, older than laws, older than Earth, older than time and light and heat and existence. In the beginning, God said, "let there be light," and they had been waiting there.

In the dead parts of the universe, they lay dreaming.

One of them stirred. A thousand miscolored eyes blinked slowly, in no particular order. Nobody knew precisely what colors its eyes were, as they had no equivalent in the visible light spectrum that most civilizations knew of. Rubbery night-leather stretched, and there was a scream that shattered the galaxy in which it had slept.

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Far above the Earth, a thousand stars twinkled rather more brightly than usual, sending out a garbled Morse message, intended for the trilobites. Now they were long-dead, and humans scuttled about busily underneath the sky. Then, all at once, those same thousand stars seemed to shift across the darkened heavens, creating a brilliant effect, as of a comet the size of Jupiter streaking through space. A sun-bright flash lit the dark half of the world for less than a split second, and then it was gone.

The curious effect went unnoticed by billions. In hilltop observatories, studious people in white labcoats remarked about it in alarm. They hadn't expected such a thing. The object had been worryingly large and frighteningly nearby for the split seconds that it had appeared on their screens and monitoring equipment; after that, it had vanished entirely, both from the skies and from all of their equipment, as if it had never been there at all.

Outside of the space station, high above the planet's surface, an astronaut drifted, staring. There had been an infra-black flash behind his eyes, and a feeling that his soul and mind were flayed apart into ribbons. And now he didn't think of anything. Not after the flash. For being only half of a split second long, it had been an eternity. He stared. He had been doing something, but couldn't remember what it was. Couldn't remember what he was doing up here, either, and couldn't think of what it might have been. He drifted further, the line connecting him to the main structure pulling tight. It creaked soundlessly in space, and after a moment, it severed. Tom Sosa floated, his mind frozen in horror, not of being severed from the cable tying him to a firm space, but of the infra-black flash. There had been things crawling, reaching, in that flash, and those things had made his soul crawl as well. His eyes darted about restlessly even as he died, on the lookout for those Things, and he wondered, distant and dim and vague, if it would hurt to decay, or if he would be safer from those Things being dead.

He floated toward the moon as night overtook the western hemisphere of the Earth below. Tom shuddered in the icy reaches of space--not from the cold, but from the dim, vague fear that there might be Things waiting out in the darkness.

Meanwhile, down on Earth, on the North American continent, a city glowed in the hot desert night, throwing bright light into the dust-choked air for miles. A man stood at the window of his apartment, gazing down into the city full of lights and life. He'd had a dream that troubled him immensely, and the life and movement in the city below soothed him. Shining black figures reflecting his face, like humanoid funhouse mirrors… He had stared at a roomful of them, and the room had been star-bright white, covered in glass. The glass had not reflected his face, but the black figures had. The black figures had touched his face lovingly, and it made his skin crawl--because he could feel _theirs_ crawling, like a thousand tiny insects under a thin layer of rubbery skin. They had been whispering in strange languages. Languages that had been unthinkably ancient when the planet was a cooling lump of plasma hanging in cold space. That was the part that troubled him the most--the ancient whisperings.

He would've given anything to forget those vile, guttural whispers in the dark, and was very happy that he couldn't hear them now… Didn't matter much. Dreams were just dreams. Right…?

He rested his forehead against the cool window, and his hot breath fogged up the glass. He tried to comfort himself with the notion that it had only been an awful nightmare, and he'd had some awful nightmares before. But it had nonetheless troubled him deeply, to the pit of his soul, and he knew that he was not going to get back to sleep that night without the aid of the happy pills. He supposed a walk would be just as good.

Though he wished he were on patrol that night instead. More interesting, and it would've taken his mind off of things at any rate. And maybe it meant he would've avoided having that fucking dream at all. He scratched his chin absently as he shuffled to the coatrack by the door. It seemed like a cool night, so he wanted his jacket… and just for safety, he picked up his gunbelt and strapped that on, too. The heavy weight of it comforted him, the way that the warmth and soft weight of a teddy bear would comfort a child who'd just encountered the bogie-man.

Now, out to the night, to walk, to try to forget.

Far across that same city, a young lady walked, her hands in her sweatshirt pockets, her face tilted up to look at the dim, smog-obscured stars. She wasn't going anywhere in particular. Just walking on, ever onward and upward, through the eye-searing sea of lights; the expression on her round face was the contemplative expression of someone who spent excessively long amounts of time pondering the ills and joys of the universe. But she wasn't thinking about terribly much, really.

Just that she wished she could have gone traveling somewhere--besides endlessly circling the streets of just one city, over and over and over again, day in and day out. Sure, it was a big city, and big cities had plenty of things to keep you occupied; that was why she had moved from the small Ohio town she'd lived in for most of her life all the way out west.

Still, Morgan MacBride felt restless and impatient. She had a job and a stable, secure life; during the day, she worked for a local patisserie delivering cakes and other treats on her rickety old bicycle. The pay was pretty decent. It kept her fed and it kept her put up in a small, somewhat bare apartment. So, mustn't grumble; it was a decent way of living, secure and safe, never having to really worry about much. It was scads more than a lot of people had, and she was grateful for that.

Still, Morgan wanted to go other places. Places with history and stories, where adventures and excitement could be found by the brave souls who dared to explore far enough. Australia, for instance. Australia seemed like a neat place, full of interesting wildlife, friendly folks with charming accents, foreboding canyons and lonely deserts. Or Russia. Looked pretty neat over there. Or England. Or Finland or Iceland or Egypt or Morocco or _anywhere that wasn't here_. It was safe here in town, but that was what made it so dead _dull_! She would've sold her soul for a mad adventure and someone to share it with.

She paused at a crosswalk, waiting for the little green 'walk' man to replace the pulsing red 'do not cross' hand. Just a little excitement. That was what she wanted. Her days and nights were extremely routine, no matter how much she tried to shake it up, no matter how wild she tried to be.

She'd tried some everyday adventures first--she'd tried drinking, but didn't like the taste or the smell of alcohol; she'd spent the rest of that night downing milk in an attempt to get it out of her mouth; after that, she'd tried smoking, but the smoke made her sneeze and cough, so she'd had to put a stop to that.

After _that_, she'd tried going out clubbing, but found that claustrophobia had sent her to her knees, gasping, much to her embarrassment; there were far too many people in far too small a place. The dark and the pulsing neon lights hadn't made it any better, nor had the pounding bass forcing its way into her skull, squeezing in between her fingers as she clapped her hands over her ears and ground her teeth, trying to make it all stop.

And after _that_, she'd sort of given up on everyday adventures and just started walking around the city, with absolutely no destination or purpose in mind. Morgan would just walk until she got tired and felt like going to bed, at which point she'd make her way back to the poor side of town, head up the stairs in the old apartment building, say good night to the Watch-Cat who always seemed to be sitting on a ratty old wicker chair in front of the landlady's door, and then go into her own apartment and pass out curled up in a pile of pillows. It wasn't much, but it was her life, no matter how much she had grown to dislike it. It was safe, secure, stable--it was what was expected of her, and nothing more. Disappointing and depressing. She was doing the responsible, adult thing.

She hated it.

She had carefully considered the matter through many a night of wandering aimlessly around and around the city streets after work, and several slow afternoons when she just lay in bed staring at the crumbling ceiling, and had come to the conclusion that being an adult was a rotten thing. Being a child and being a teenager hadn't been a lot better, but responsibility really sucked. It was boring, being a good girl. Boring and rather depressing. Good girls didn't have any fun. Such was her nature, though, and try as she might to get away from it, she hadn't succeeded.

Morgan crossed at the light and turned left, walking down a sidewalk full of cheery reveling folk. A tall woman with a party hat raised an empty champagne-glass to her, grinning merrily, and slurred a happy something-or-other to Morgan. She wondered what tonight was and why they were celebrating. It was just an empty, quiet Indian-summer night. There were partiers and lovers and madmen milling all about, but it was a quiet night.

A tall, thin man in a leather jacket brushed past her, and a chill suddenly stole over her; she looked around, broken out of her reverie for a moment, and it drew her to a pause in the middle of the sidewalk. Like someone walked over her grave... Of course that thought was disturbing. Another shiver slipped down her spine. The air felt alive and electric, as though a storm were brewing right there over the sidewalk; it made her skin prickle with a nervous excitement. She cast her gray-green eyes about madly, as if looking for a little black rain cloud hanging above her head, and adjusted her glasses, which seemed to have fogged up of their own accord, despite the dry desert air. Curiouser and curiouser… Morgan took off her glasses and wiped them dry and clear with the corner of her T-shirt, then put them back on and blinked; the air did not feel any less thick or electric. If anything, the feeling had intensified. Another shuddering chill ran through her, and she looked straight up at the sky. Somehow, the heavens held the answer; she didn't know how or why she had reached this conclusion, which disturbed her, after a moment's reflection. It had simply come into her mind, as a simple fact, the way everyone knows that summer follows spring.

A silvery shooting star tore through the smog-choked, over-bright night sky. Startled and suddenly very uneasy, for reasons she couldn't quite understand herself, Morgan wondered if she should look down. If she should just keep walking onward and ignore any answer that heaven, earth, hell, wherever, whoever might have given her. Perhaps the answer to the question, the reason for the electric night, was not something that was meant for her. And even if it was meant for her, did she really want to know it? A fragment of verse occurred to her, from some storybook she'd read as a child--_or wonder till it drives you mad, what would've followed you if you had_. Tolkien? Or Lewis, maybe? She took a step forward and sighed to herself.

_Well_, she thought, _nothing ventured, nothing gained_. Morgan started walking again, out towards the direction in which the shooting star had gone, out towards the southern edge of the town. Something was waiting for her there. She didn't know what it was, and had a distinct feeling that it wasn't going to be entirely pleasant or cheering when she found it.

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There is no worse thing than spiders in your head.

He had found this out the hard way. It itched horribly, and it wasn't even an itch you could get to. Even if you tore out every rich-brown lock of your hair, carefully, strand by strand. Even if you got right down to the skin and dug your ragged brown nails into it and scratched, putting all of your strength and fury into trying to scratch that itch, you still couldn't get to it. It just kept itching.

And it was noisy, too. The crawling of the spiders was awful loud. He wished they were quiet, like normal spiders on nature shows, like the Discovery channel used to have. He used to watch the Discovery channel; he liked the shows about sharks. Sharks were pretty cool, and he always liked watching those crazy motherfuckers who'd go down and try to pet the sharks. He'd laughed at them with Danny and Rob. They'd bring some booze--cheap shit, but the good shit--and the cards for poker, and they would play a few games and watch Shark Week. They'd drink every time some idiot did something that would get the shark snapping at them, and be delightfully buzzed in no time at all. And he'd thought spiders were pretty cool, too, until they'd moved into his head. On the nature shows, they were quiet and just went about living their lives, not really bothering anyone. But these things! They built their hundreds of tiny webs in a cacophony of sharp steel strands, the unbearably loud scraping against the inside of his skull, and the endless crunching and clicking of thousands of tiny fangs.

Danny and Rob hadn't been over in an awful long time. He sort of wanted to see them and play poker again, or maybe smoke 'em at Monopoly; he was the only one in his wide circle of friends with the patience for Monopoly. And he always got Park Place and Boardwalk; he was good at the game, good at hustling deals like that. But it had been a long time since he'd felt like dragging himself out of bed. Not that he would have been able to anyway. Still, he just didn't feel like moving very much. It might've aggravated his tenants, and that would have made it itch even worse, because it would have wrecked their stupid webs. Would have made the noises louder. So he'd laid on his belly in his bed for weeks, staring at the headboard with wide, sleepless, staring eyes. He didn't dare to close his eyes, either. It might have bothered his tenants if he slept. He knew that he snored and that he tossed and turned. His last girlfriend had told him as much. Sort of missed her. She'd been a rose, she had, but she'd left him, and he couldn't quite remember why anymore, no more than he remembered why there were spiders nesting in his skull right now, or when it had started.

He scratched his head again, and howled, loud and piteously, as his ragged nails tore open several red gashes. Had itched so much that he'd dug fine little furrows down to the bone, and they never quite closed. Every time he dragged the fingernails across, trying to get to the maddening itch in his brain, he would tear open an old one and it would bleed afresh. Then the noise would become even louder, as if they were scolding him for ruining their work.

Hot tears slid down his dry face; he dug his nails into the rough sheets of his bed instead and let his head bleed. At least the itching had receded a little bit, for even just a second, before starting back up again amidst a racket of angry fang-clicking and whining steel strings. He groaned quietly and buried his head into the pillow. One ice-blue eye twitched as he felt dozens of tiny, spindly legs gingerly creeping over the back of one of his eyes.

He felt a tiny, tight thread wind around the optic nerve directly behind his eyeball, and his eyelid twitched again. Next would come the nightmares. They seemed to do this in cycles. First they'd crawl around weaving their webs. He'd scratch and tear open old wounds, shaking the spiders around. Then they'd continue weaving their webs, and they'd be careful to weave them around his eyes, too, so that he saw everything they were doing. He would see the spiders crawling through his skull, weaving intricate silver webs in the empty space. He would see flashes of Things. Pink fungoid things with curious, grabbing hands with dozens of long, oily fingers. Great green octopoid thing with grabbing, slurping tentacles in place of teeth, and it would grin at him, then gurgle nastily at him, as if to say, "hello!"

He'd see the flashes of those Things for weeks; they'd get clearer and closer the longer the spiders spun, and then he couldn't take it anymore, and he'd have to itch. They'd disappear from his mind for a short time, then it would just start up the whole vicious cycle again.

There's no escaping spiders in your head.

-------------------------------------------------

Morgan finally stopped outside of a small gas station. It had once been a gas station, anyway; it was closed, decrepit and crumbling now, abandoned for years. She had walked a very long time, and her feet were actually tired; she felt a mild sense of accomplishment in this. While she would walk for a few hours almost every night, she never managed to feel all that tired--really, she'd usually feel more restless, awake, and nervous than anything else. It was the early morning now, closer to dawn (though, with the lights and the smog and the way that the sky above the city usually was, who could really tell?) and even the wildest of the party animals had turned in for the night. The streets were eerily quiet, but something about the air hummed with energy and excitement. She looked around, then turned to her left and looked down at the ground, scanning it carefully--for what, she still wasn't sure… until she saw it.

A small crystalline orb, about the size of her thumb--perfectly round and perfectly clear, though, somehow, it had become somewhat embedded in the dirty, broken pavement of the abandoned gas station's parking lot, though the surface didn't look at all scratched or cracked. The shooting star? Seemed just about right. Morgan knelt before it and brushed it with her fingers hesitantly.

The crystal spoke to her--whispered tantalizingly and promisingly of a high and righteous Destiny, of power and of glory, of the tales of mighty stars and of how they came to be set in the sky. It promised a place in the heavens for the remembrance of all eternity; it swore her a story of her own; it avowed adventures and excitement. It was silent, as any lump of stone would be, but its presence spoke of the stars, and it spoke volumes.

It came out of the pavement easily. She picked it up and squeezed it in her hand. Energy--power--coursed through her body when she did; it felt warm and exciting, like soft fire in her heart. She stood up and was suddenly struck dizzy; she stumbled a bit, clutching the little orb tightly in her fist, and grabbed at empty air for something to hold onto to keep herself standing. That was dumb. Why had she grabbed at a weird little thing from space, embedded in broken, oil-caked pavement--'cos it was shiny? She scolded herself deliriously--_what are you, Morgan, a magpie? Where's your common sense, the good-girl's responsibility?_--and stumbled again, trying to take a step forward. The little rock was probably covered with all kinds of alien germs and radiation and other undesirable nastiness. Probably poisoned her right off, just by touching it--who knew what kind of germs a space-crystal would have?

She felt a pair of arms wrap around her and steady her carefully. Her vision was still swimming, and distantly, she heard a voice, the words muddled and unclear. It was a deep voice. A man? What…? Absently, she swung at the figure, but he caught her wrist, knocking the little crystal orb out of her hand. It clattered to the pavement, though it didn't appear to get scuffed or cracked in any way. The world righted itself almost immediately, the dizziness gone as swiftly as it had come. She shook her head a little, still very confused. The person loosened his grip, but kept a hand on her shoulder to make sure she was all right. Morgan turned slightly to look at the person. Good-looking fellow; tall and somewhat muscular, with dark hair, sharp green eyes, a fair bit of scruff about his chin, and a somewhat concerned look on his face.

"You all right there, girly?" he asked. His voice was deep, authoritative, and carried some kind of New Englander's accent. Bostonian, perhaps. It was unusual to hear out in this part of the country, so it stuck out.

"Um. I think," she said uncertainly, face turning pink.

"Not hurt, are ya?" She shook her head no; he leaned a little closer to her, giving her a quick once-over. No bruises or cuts or bumps visible on her pudgy body; her clothes didn't seem to be wrinkled or torn or in any way out of order; her russet-brown hair was neatly combed and tied into girlish pigtails. Her glasses were perched neatly on the bridge of her nose, and her gray eyes held a bit of confusion, but looked otherwise fine. Not a freckle out of place, it seemed. Shrugging, the man knelt to pick up the little crystal, dusted it off with the edge of his blue T-shirt, and examined it for a moment. It glittered under the orange, flickering light of the nearby dying streetlamp. Just a little bauble. "Do you have any known illnesses, allergies, shit like that?" She fidgeted nervously, shaking her head no again, but didn't respond verbally, so he merely shrugged again. "Hm. This yours?" He held it out to her; she hesitated for a moment before opening her hand to take it again, wincing in dread. This time, though, nothing happened--no dizzy spells, no stone whispers. Yet somehow, it seemed to sparkle _knowingly_, almost menacingly, although the thought of anything sparkling menacingly almost made her laugh for its absurdity. Morgan pocketed it. "What happened here?" he asked as he reached into his coat pocket and produced a packet of cigarettes, carefully selected one, and poked it into the corner of his thin lips. A tiny nervous laugh escaped the girl. How on earth would she explain this to _anyone_? Morgan chewed her index fingernail; it was her nervous habit. The man struck a match against his thumbnail and lit his cigarette, taking a puff on it.

"Er," she said, unable to come up with anything that wouldn't make her sound absolutely mad. She shuffled a foot on the pavement shyly.

"Go on," he encouraged. Regular first-aid procedure, finding out exactly what had happened to the patient. He wanted to make sure that the girl hadn't been struck in the head or ingested anything unhealthy. Just doing his job, even if he was off the clock. Protect and serve and all that.

From not too far away, there came an earsplitting howl of pain. A shudder shook her body. A cry of body-rending pain… of birth…? It was a truly awful sound, and she found it mightily disturbing that any creature, human or animal, could have made that noise; it was the kind of scream that one would have expected to hear coming out of a portal to Hell, not from some earthly person, even in the greatest of pains. The man heard it, too, and that seemed to distract him from questioning Morgan any further. He pitched the cigarette onto the pavement, crushed it out with the toe of his shoe, and ran in the direction of the screaming. There was another pained howl, and then a hellish screech that most definitely wasn't man or beast; it was a far louder, and a thousand times more terrible than any noise she could think of anybody making.

Morgan took a couple of steps forward, then started to jog toward the sounds, after the man in the blue T-shirt.

-----------------------------------------------------

The man howled, scratching his jagged, ragged nails at his eyes. He was sick of it all. Couldn't stand it anymore. One of the eyes had torn open at the brush and catch of one of those ragged, stumpy claws that his fingernails had become after months of neglect. It bled and dripped on the carpet as he stumbled and staggered, screaming, down the hall, towards the door.

Had to get out. Had to try and shake the spiders out. He'd had it and that was that. He had clawed at his head wildly, scraping the wounds open yet again, and the hot blood ran down into his eyes, dripped onto the old, creaky floorboards of the house as he staggered towards the door, slamming against the wall and leaving a trail of gore as he left. He couldn't take the visions anymore. Couldn't take the green octopoid Thing waggling its tentacled mouth at him and the nasty gurgling speech. Couldn't take the coiled tiny webs around his optic nerves or the spiders crawling through his skull and strolling purposefully over his eyeballs. Wanted them out.

He scratched at his eyes, his ragged nails catching on the other eyelid and pulling it down, gashing it open. Blood dripped into his ice-blue eyes, blinding him. Had to break the webs apart. The scuttling, the clicking, the sound of straining strands of metal, were up to a din now. Had to get them out.

The man lumbered out of the front door blindly, tumbled down the stone stairs, and onto the sidewalk. The tiny spiders clicked their mandibles angrily at him; he could hear it echoing loudly in his head. Still not out. His torn eyes pulsed lightly, wriggling loosely in their sockets. One fell lamely and brushed wetly against his cheek. He screamed again, but this wasn't so much in pain as joy, as he felt one of the spiders crawl out of the empty hole; the little spindly legs marching down his face still made his skin crawl, but at last, they were _leaving_!

Morgan gagged and covered her mouth with her hand as she saw the person who was screaming. It was just a man. Looked like a man, anyway… Everywhere you looked, his head was bleeding profusely. A popped eye made distressing squelching noises as it swung across his cheek, and the other one seemed to be rather close to losing its proper place in its eye socket, as well. He was down on his knees at the bottom of some stairs, his ragged nails still clawing madly at his head. Spiders, tiny and shining, were starting to troop out of his open eyes. He grinned madly, a man who had long since gone careening off of the edge of reason and rationality.

The tiny silvery spiders scuttled across the dark pavement, glimmering beautifully in the sickly orange light of the streetlamps. The man in the blue T-shirt stomped on one--it crunched and squealed underneath his heavy black boots--and he picked it up by a long, thin leg. It cut the callused flesh of his fingers, and he dropped it, hissing and sucking on the cut. Vicious little fucker. He stomped on some more out of irritation. Ever more were crawling out of the other unfortunate man's head, forming a marching gray carpet of clicking mandibles and squealing shrieks. Things were reflected in the silvery web that they wove as they walked (he wondered how), and he gagged at the visions in the web. He clapped a hand over his mouth and choked back the rising bile of revulsion. The things. The things from his nightmare. Slimy, shiny, smooth mirror-people grinned out at him from the fluttering web; the thickly-woven web seemed to rise and crest, and black, perfectly round, perfectly smooth heads started to rise from the mirrored, silvery threads… He ground his teeth together and started furiously stomping on the spiders, fully aware of how perfectly goddamn goofy he probably looked, but he didn't fuckin' care anymore. He just wanted them _dead_. He didn't want to see those things ever again. Didn't want them to crawl out of an empty place and jump on him and touch him. Didn't want to feel their creepy-crawly rubber skin. Not in his nightmares, not in his waking life, not in his city. Never.

The loud crunching of the little shining spiders broke Morgan from her horror. Instinctively, she reached into her pocket and grabbed at the crystal, as if scrabbling for comfort. Power. She wanted to feel the power, the soft fire that she'd felt in her heart right before the dizzy spell struck her. She gripped it tightly and brought it out of her pocket, backing away from the crawling spiders. They were weaving a web of nightmares over the street as they marched ever onward, out into the night, out of the poor man's head. A few of them crunched underneath her tennis shoes as she did. She squeezed the crystal in her fist tightly and looked over at the man in the blue T-shirt, who was furiously stamping on as many of the creatures as he could. Something else was rising from the webs--an enormous black creature, completely glass-smooth, save for two mouths full of jagged, dagger-like teeth. It grinned stupidly as it rose and shook free of the strands of silver, reached out its long black arms, and pulled itself all of the way out. The pavement cracked underneath its weight; its stupid grin widened and saliva dripped from one corner of it, hitting the pavement with a hiss.

In one fluid motion, the man in the blue T-shirt instinctively grabbed for the gun hanging from his belt, gripping it tight and firing at the black creature. The crack of the gunshots seemed to startle it a bit--at the very least, it wiped the stupid grin off of the creature's un-face, which was only the very smallest comfort--but the bullets seemed to just stick in its rubbery skin. They didn't penetrate it, and it didn't bleed from being struck by a volley of bullets from a SIG P226. They just stuck there.

She shuddered violently upon looking at the thing that had pulled itself out of the web of nightmares. It didn't seem to really have a back, nor a front. There were two mouths on the back of its head as well, its obsidian body otherwise completely smooth. The surface reflected her terrified face, and the reflection shuddered when she shuddered. Disgusting…

She squeezed the crystal tightly in her fist.

He reloaded the gun, his hands shaking, and fired at the creature again. If nothing else, he found it comforting to pump the goddamn thing full of lead. The gunfire seemed to startle it, kept it back from him, and that was comforting, too, though he felt rather guilty that it seemed to be backing towards the young lady, who had followed him over to investigate the screaming and foul inhuman noises that had followed it. He circled around the creature and stepped in front of her, the gun still at the ready. Protect and serve. Even if he was off the clock, he still had a job to do, an oath he'd taken, and all that sorta shit. He shot off another round at the creature. Still, it didn't seem to be taking any real damage from the shots.

"Stay behind me, girly," the man ordered. She nodded. The two slowly backed away from the bizarre creature, its dumb grins spread on all of its mouth once again. It flattened against the street, leaving the spent shells on the pavement, and slithered around, a flat, ultra-black shadow circling around behind the girl. She yelped as it brushed one long claw against her face lovingly--it was black and rubbery, yet she could feel its skin crawling, as if it was filled with thousands of tiny insects marching through its veins (did it even have veins? she wondered deliriously). It said something, but she wasn't sure what; it was some long-dead language, dead for aeons when the stars were still young. It pressed one claw against the top of her head, squeezing it. The man reloaded his gun a third time and tried to find an opening to shoot at; he didn't want to hit the girly, of course, but… His hand trembled a bit, and the gun rattled slightly as it did. The nightmare of its crawling flesh occurred to him again, and the man shuddered violently.

The creature gurgled nastily as it softly squeezed Morgan's head. There was something tasty in there; it smelled sweet and enticing. A wonderful treat, probably. Silvery strands of dream-stuff. It bared its awful lipless mouths in a greedy smile. Tasty things.

She wailed hoarsely and swung at it blindly. Her elbow dug into some firm thing (a skull?) buried in its blank non-face. It snarled loudly and let her go; she landed on the ground, scraping her hands and her cheek against the pavement and some dead metal spiders. The man with the gun made motions to her with one hand--stay down!--and she crouched as he fired a few more rounds into the thing, pushing it back away from her. Morgan scuttled clumsily across the ground, trying to avoid the thing's notice, but to no avail; it grabbed her in a massive creeping hand and grinned awfully, but briefly--then it started to frown and howl, and it was a horrible noise. Imagine nails on a chalkboard, imagine the futile squealing of dying animals, imagine the shriek of flying missiles, imagine a crack of thunder to shake the ground itself, imagine rasping metal, imagine breaking glass. It was louder and a thousand times more horrible.

It had seen things. Things that were alien and unfamiliar. Boxes in which they trapped thunder and lightning; they would strike the boxes, and the bony creatures in dangling rags would dance among the rolling thunder and the flashing lightning. A dark creature with a burning smile, embedded in the earth, dancing amidst fire and thunder. Bright white sand and the deafening pound of gray surf. Flat teeth viciously crushing and tearing the flesh of other creatures. A cacophony of screaming metal strings, and the sigh of a young fleshy creature. A burning star bathing the world in heat and light. Too bright. Too hot.

It didn't like what it saw at all. Its crawling skin rose and stretched with gooseflesh the size of human hands.

It dropped Morgan to the ground, and she got to her feet, blowing on her hands and trying to brush dirt off of them; the pavement and the corpses of tiny metal spiders had scuffed them up pretty well. The man with the gun had run out of ammo, and was now frantically pawing around the gunbelt for something else to throw at the creature. Pepper spray, or a billy club, something!

The creature bayed atrociously and piteously, in a voice to shake the moon, and the spiders marched onward. Another black shape rose from the silvery web; this one was larger, but looked otherwise exactly the same. The ground shook as it prowled towards the two humans; it roared, but this roar had far more power in it; something about it came off as being ten times as vicious and angry. Morgan's lips twitched, forming silent words. She didn't like this. Not at all. She wished she hadn't followed the man in the blue shirt. Seeing that poor fellow with the gouged-out eyes was bad enough, but this was worse. The shimmering, crawling skin touching her face, the awful howling and roaring, the burning, sulfur-scented air, the ever-present clicking of the tiny metal spider-legs… She shuddered. The bigger of the creatures reached towards her, and she jumped away just in time; it cut a few strands of her brown hair. She saw them float lazily to the ground, glinting in the dimming streetlamp's light, and get lost in the increasingly thick rug of webbing that the spiders were still weaving, purposeful and ever the hard workers. Other, even more terrible shapes moved around in the silver mess.

She had seen the world beyond that web, just a tiny flash, when the black shape touched her. She wouldn't have been able to recall it later, except that she remembered that it was a horrible, alien place, somewhere that she didn't want to see again.

The young lady frowned and ground her teeth as it swung out at her again, snapping six sets of thousands of teeth each. She didn't want those things to touch her again. Didn't want to feel the crawling rubbery flesh. She would have to scream herself into abject, blind madness if it touched her again; that would be the only way to cope with it, the only way to forget the touch, to forget the hazy dark reflections of her face in their smooth, shiny skin. She squeezed her eyes shut.

Morgan didn't like her life very much, but she _did_ quite like being able to think. Think and dream and remember. She didn't want to lose that. She didn't _have_ anything else but thoughts and daydreams and memories, and she wanted to _keep_ those, thank you very much. She liked to sleep peacefully and dream of bright seas and flying ships and star-people; she liked to walk across the town on Indian-summer nights and think of visiting the Tower of London or hiking through Incan ruins; liked to read detective novels and try and guess the solutions before reaching the last chapter; liked to listen to German heavy metal and attempt to translate the lyrics in her head with the two years of German class she'd taken in high school. Losing the noise that constantly ran through her mind, the soft hissing of the speed of thoughts, terrified her. She didn't want a silent wasteland in her mind. She wanted to be able to think.

Of course, she hadn't really thought all of this. It was more of a feeling, really; her only clearly-articulated thought had been something more along the lines of a panicked mantra of, _NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO_, _NO, NO, NO, NO, NO…_

Those words that she had subconsciously started mouthing to herself. What were they…? The soft fire that had entered her heart when she touched the round little crystal was suddenly set ablaze. She wanted to keep her self. She wanted to keep dreaming; she wanted those things to _go away_ and leave her mind alone.

"E… Epsilon Power… M… Make UP!" she cried, opening her hand. The crystal blazed with an unnatural white light, bathing Morgan. The dark creatures howled again, in mingled fear and anger, and leapt at her. The man finally decided to give it a shot; he grabbed the can of pepper spray in his belt and gave them a shot in the place where faces should have been. They recoiled slightly from it, clawing at their un-faces with long knife-like claws, and he gave them a second shot of it before briefly turning his head to look at the girl. _Could this night get any fuckin' weirder_? he wondered deliriously.

Apparently, it could. The light faded, and the girly was dressed in something completely different--it looked like a damn Halloween costume, as opposed to the practical clothing she'd been wearing before. It appeared to be a white leotard with a sailor's collar, white opera-gloves, a short white skirt, white socks, and white tennis shoes. The only splash of color in the entire outfit was a pale yellow ribbon tied into a bow over her chest and two stripes of the same color on the sailor-collar. She didn't look like she had any more clue than he did as to what the fuck was going on. Which was just fantastic.

The creatures snarled loudly and lunged for her; she put her arms up defensively, and they glanced off of a solid wall of force. It was clearly visible for just a second, glimmering gold in the dawn's pale and sickly light. Regrettably, it only seemed to make the creatures angrier. She looked from side to side, panicking slightly. She didn't know what to do. In comic books and TV shows, superheroes always knew what to do immediately, but she didn't feel any mystic bolt of wisdom strike her, nor the mighty martial-arts prowess that all heroes seemed to have. Worth a try anyway, wasn't it? She attempted a roundhouse kick at the smaller of the monsters just to check it out, but wound up missing it completely and falling on her ass. Even amidst the madness, the man had to work to suppress a laugh. It was a funny thing to see, was all. Besides which, if he didn't laugh, he'd have to start screaming, because this was just fuckin' madness, it was. He didn't like screaming much. The girl rolled out of the way when the smaller creature swung its heavy knife-like claws at her. How was she going to do this? She'd never been in so much as a pigtail-pulling spat in her entire life. How was she going to get rid of these two enraged _things_? They were several times her size, and didn't respond at all to _gunshots_. They'd responded a little bit to the pepper spray that the man had sprayed in the blank expanse of their heads, but that was it so far… She ducked another swing and tripped into the man, who was futilely trying to find something to combat the creatures with. In the same boat, weren't they?

Morgan tried to think of something. _Magic_ was all that came to her mind. The bigger of the creatures roared again; its breathing was heavy and gurgling. It drooled acidic saliva onto the pavement, and it pooled, smoking viciously, like a witch's potion. _MAGIC_. She examined the word in her mind, circling it carefully, appraising it, and suddenly grasped it. She had _magic_… she could do anything she _wanted_. She could fight back.

She felt a tendril whip past her face, within whispering distance, and her wondrous, rational thoughts regarding magic stopped in their tracks. Instead, they were replaced with rather more disjointed, defensive thoughts.She squeezed her hands into fists again, then held a hand out to her side, wishing for a weapon, for power, for something... Wishing for something to blow those disgusting things away--any-- The larger of the creatures was bearing down on her now, salivating and grinning threateningly. Something metal and heavy, but comforting to the touch, formed in her hands… A microgun; a Gatling about the size of the young lady herself, though she didn't seem to have trouble at all with lifting it, as if it were light as a feather. She lifted it, stumbled back a couple of steps, and fired it as the bigger creature just as it snapped its jaws at her. Round after round of long, pointed, peculiarly _bright_ bullets screamed out of the gun, the chain whipping about in the air as it was emptied; the bullets tore at the creature's skin and the thick bone of its skull, and the top knob of its spine, splattering it onto the desert hardpan at the other side of the empty street. The microgun dropped slightly, and some more bullets tore through its shadowy, oozing chest; what was left of the creature dropped on the pavement, twitching slightly, and then was still. She shivered, high on the adrenaline, and turned to the smaller one, which was crawling around behind its dispatched sibling, mewling and wailing horribly. It brushed its great, quivering head against the smoking remains of the other creature and snarled, springing at Morgan.

An arc of violet lightning soundlessly split the air, and the other creature fell to the ground as well; it made a nasty, yet bizarrely comical "splat!" noise when it landed; very shortly afterward, it started to crumble and turn to dust, blowing away in the desert wind--the same with the spiders. She looked around wildly, clutching the barrel of the magical microgun to herself. Another young lady stood on the edge of a building, up above Morgan and the man in the blue T-shirt; she wore a similar sailor uniform, save that her ribbon was a pale violet color, and she wore stiletto-heeled boots instead of tennis shoes. There was another person there, as well, a person in a dark leather jacket, with a thick mop of dark, curly hair. He patted the other sailor-uniformed woman on the head, stroking her dirty-blond hair.

"Good job, Sigma," he said. He had a rich, warm voice, but Morgan found herself unnerved at the sound. The other woman smiled, in a creepily vacant manner, and allowed herself to be patted on the head.

"Um. Thank you very much for your help," Morgan called to the other people uncertainly.

"No problem!" the fellow in the leather jacket said cheerily, waving one large hand. He hopped off of the edge of the building, as if he were just hopping off of a curb, and Morgan gasped--but he landed on his feet neatly. "Ahh--I see one of our other players has arrived!" He looked her up and down closely. "Sailor Epsilon, I believe?"

"My name is Morgan," she said uncertainly.

"Hmm." He leaned closer to her, squinting his eyes at her chest. She fidgeted and flinched away with an indignant huff. How _rude_! "Oh, come off it. I wasn't bein' rude." The other sailor-suited woman appeared in a puff of soft-violet smoke, looking cross, but remaining silent. "But I believe you're Sailor Epsilon. Yes. This is Sailor Sigma." He put an arm around the other woman. "And we're sure to be seeing lots more of each other. Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name." A grin spread across his face; it wanted to be a warm grin, but skewed malicious instead. "Go on, let's all shake hands. Be polite."

Morgan, confused, held up her hand for it. The man in the leather jacket shook--he had a firm grip--but the other woman merely looked at her strangely. He tutted at her reprovingly.

"Don't be that way, Sigma," he scolded gently. "It's the classy thing to do."

"Yes, sir," she replied, offering her hand. She shook with Morgan, weakly, looking mildly suspicious.

"There's a girl." The curly-haired man patted her on the head, and she smiled shyly. "And now, Miss--Morgan, was it?--Sig and I have business to attend to elsewhere, so if you'll excuse us…" He nodded at Sailor Sigma, who waved her hand. Both of them vanished in a puff of soft-violet smoke, leaving a baffled Morgan--Sailor Epsilon?--and the man in the blue T-shirt, who just scoffed and shook his head. Apparently, the world had gone and decided to suddenly stop making any sense whatsoever. Dizzy girlies in pretty sailor outfits, sharp-legged metal spiders, the things of nightmares, magical sparkly microguns, purple magic spells, folks jumpin' off of buildings…

He threw his hands up in the air and muttered, "I officially have no idea what the flyin' fuck is going on here anymore." The thought disturbed him. It was _his _city, and he didn't like the notion of not knowing what was going on, of not being in control of the chaos--at the very least, he liked his authority and the rule of the law to be recognized. He'd have to stay and question the remaining girly further. "What was all that about, huh?" he asked her gruffly. "And have you got a permit for that?" He motioned at the handheld Gatling before going into his pocket for his cigarettes again, pausing only to hold the packet out to her. She shook her head no.

"I--I don't really know, either," she admitted, leaning against the microgun and trying to smile.

"Hmph! Ain't that about a bitch," he grumbled, taking a drag of the freshly-lit cigarette and blowing a smoke-ring into the air. "So you don't know anything. Not how those… _things_ came out, not how you managed to summon a--a fuckin' magic gun, not how you poofed into that frilly little skirt?" She shook her head.

"Am I in trouble?" she asked nervously. For a few moments, the man didn't say anything, weaving his quickly-burning cig through his fingers thoughtfully, staring at the ragged body of the unfortunate man, the one that the spiders had crawled out of. He sighed. How would he report this, explain it to his superiors? Well, he could report it as a commonplace murder, but there would be lots of things to explain that couldn't be explained correctly without sounding like a goddamn nutcase.

"I suppose not. They'd cart me off to the nut hut if I started ravin' about magical sailor girls, nightmare spiders, n' shit. I like my job too much to take that risk. But I warn you, girly…" His green eyes glittered, and his voice was deep and serious. "Don't fuck it up. I'll remember you, and I hope we can get along. You seem like a nice enough girl. But I won't hesitate to take you down if you start gettin' up to shenanigans--breaking laws and harmin' the citizenry."

"Of course not, sir," she agreed. "I wouldn't want to run afoul of the law."

"Good." He kicked a pile of dust that had once been a mighty crawling darkness, then tossed his finished cigarette into it and stomped it out. What a weird night. A few hours ago, he'd felt like never sleeping again as long as he lived, but now that was all he wanted to do. Sleep, and forget. Of course, he knew, very deep down, that he wouldn't be able to forget, not as long as he lived, and maybe even after that. But dammit, he could try, couldn't he? "I'm Officer Ian Moffat, by the way. In case you need to call me." He took out his cigarette pack, but tore the paper off of the top of it and scribbled his telephone number on it with a pen. "You said your name was Morgan, right?" She nodded.

"Morgan MacBride."

"That other guy called you Sailor Epsilon."

"Yes, he did… I'm afraid I'm not sure what he meant by it, though." This was all awfully confusing. She wondered if Superman had felt this way when he found out he could throw cars around like tennis balls and soar into the stratosphere; she wondered if he'd felt confused and awkward, or if he'd felt powerful and free. Honestly, Morgan felt a bit of both. On the one hand… she was special now. She was _Sailor Epsilon_ (though perhaps she'd change the name, as it sounded silly); she had magic, she had _power_; the thought occurred to her that she could be a hero now. She could have _adventures_ this way. But on the other hand, the leotard didn't flatter her pudgy body much, she didn't much like the idea of being on the law's bad side, and she hadn't much liked seeing those horrid

(_nightgaunts_)

things. Officer Moffat shrugged.

"My guess'd be a classification system of some kind. What did he call the other girly? 'Sigma,' was that it?" She thought a moment, and nodded. "Hmph. I'll have to keep an eye out for them, too." He kicked at the dust again. "What are you gonna do now?"

"Um. I don't know." She smiled shyly. "Try to figure out how to change out of this outfit, I guess. It's kind of chilly." He nodded.

"Good for you. I'm going to head home and discuss this matter with Dr Jack Daniels. You have a good night and stay out of trouble, girly. Remember what I said."

With that, Officer Moffat turned and left, disappearing from sight when he turned the corner at the end of the block. Morgan sighed and fiddled with the hem of her skirt. She didn't really want to walk all the way back across town in this sort of immodest outfit. People would stare! Not only at the short, frilly skirt and clinging leotard, but at the gun in her hands. It didn't seem to want to vanish. Morgan wondered again if Superman had had this problem, but then it occurred to her that his mother had made his superhero outfit, and _his_ outfit was really cool, despite having red undies on the outside of it. Not to mention that Superman and Supergirl weren't pudgy like she was. Still… she could at least _try_ to be super. No escaping it now, she supposed, standing there with a magical gun amidst the swirling, vanishing nightgaunt-dust. She had been given a chance at greatness, and it had to be taken, for she would never receive one again; indeed, she'd never gotten one before in her life, so it was probably best to seize onto it while she had it in front of her. She could be something more than just ordinary for once… yes. Yes, it was for the best.


	3. Vanishing Point

_**Vanishing Point**_

Every child in every world is afraid of the dark, and they are right to be afraid. Every _parent_ in every world tells the same comforting lie to their crying, screaming, frightened children; that there is nothing out there in the dark--no bogie-men waiting to jump out of the closet, no fanged, blood-slavering monsters underneath the bed to pounce at the first thing to step away from the safety of the bed, no madly-grinning man in the moon waiting to chew up their dreams, no nightgaunts whispering awful ancient truths in their ears, in the twilight zone between sleep and wakefulness. Older siblings tell a fragment of the wicked truth. There _are_ monsters waiting to eat you up. It's nothing personal, you understand. But that's only part of it. The whole truth is even worse: Blankets are not worthy shields, no matter how warm and comforting they are; the talismanic stuffed tiger that you clutch to your chest before squeezing your eyes shut to sleep will not protect you; not believing in the monsters won't make them go away; and it isn't really the _monsters_ you should worry about, anyway.

The darkness itself is what you should really worry about. While the eldritch creatures that breed in the dark can sometimes be fought off for a satisfactory amount of time, there's no such measures that one can take against the darkness. Not even flashlights or nightlights. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

The only thing worse than the darkness is the silence. True silence, mind you. The silence of life, silence as _we_ know it, is different; winds still whisper their secrets, the leaves of trees still chatter gossip, and dust still hurries along even the emptiest of plains. Humans call it "silence," but it's merely the soft background noise of _life_. Existence is a very noisy process, even for seemingly quiet things, like trees and winds and lakes, and even time's passing creates a marvelous cacophony--not of ticking clocks or slowly falling sand, but the laments of lost chances, the music of creation, the soft pulsing of a million formless futures, and the scattering of the clock-roaches that eat up the things that _were_, leaving only an occasional memory--feeble etchings in the thin dust that eventually fade away completely, lost and forgotten even by time itself. There are many things that once were--the civilizations of great gods, the queens of the moons, the soft song that chanted the universe to its existence. But they have long since been buried in the dust of aeons, leaving not even memories or works; occasionally, though, they will creep into dreams, whispering of the past, only to be dismissed as mere fancy. Time marches on, and it does so loudly, a deafening symphony over the laments of memories and keening of forgotten things.

There is a woman with dark hair and skin who watches, and who occasionally heaves a sigh for the long-forgotten; though her power is great, she can do nothing to halt time's march forever. Not even the great White Queen can halt time forever, nor can she keep away death, nor can she truly triumph over the darkness and the silence, not with all the power of love and friendship and the sparkliest crystal in the cosmos. But Sailor Pluto was a kind woman, and did not tell the great queen of this; let her believe the soft and comforting lies for now. It was better that way; it was the way of all life, great or small.

Out in the dark, a place that Sailor Pluto tries her hardest not to think about, there is true silence. Dead silence. _No-things_ lives there. They spawn from the empty, truly silent places, and they thrive. But they aren't really alive in the sense that most creatures know. They exist in silence.

Children are right to be afraid. Children _know_, but by the time they've become adults, they have been sung to sleep with comforting lies one too many time; adults forget, and thus view the cheery lies of their childhoods as irrefutable truths and realities, preferring instead to fret and fear the false and ephemeral, unreal things, stubbornly proclaiming those things to be the _real_ things to fear.

This is not so.

The no-things moved silently through the cosmos, slowly and almost _thoughtfully_, though they had nothing to think about, and moreover nothing to think with. No-things are, for the most part, docile. The trouble comes when they run into something that is, in fact, a thing, something that really exists.

-------------------------------------------------

Upstairs, in a small, cutely-decorated house--which looked like a gingerbread cabin, surrounded by candy-gardens--something slowly grew itself.

It seemed to be a tiny tear in some great fabric of time and space, slitting open and revealing an endless, bruise-black, shining mass--small at first, then tearing apart with the deafening howl of true silence. Space screamed and time fluttered helplessly around it.

The black mass bubbled and tried to form a shape. It did not think about anything, did not feel anything. It had no brain, no heart, no _being_. It simply _was not_, and it _was_ coming into being.

It cast its matte-black, oozing multitude of eyes around, surveying its new, alien surroundings. A sticky gray substance dripped from those eyes onto the floorboards of the room in which it stood--or sat--or perhaps lay. It was a peculiar shape; nobody could have told you where its head was, or from what area its hundreds of spiny, tendril-like legs and arms sprang. It squelched sickeningly as it slid across the floor and gazed upon the creature that stood staring at it, dumbstruck. That ugly pink creature stood before a big hard, clear box in which four enormous fish swam around; there was a small tube in the pink creature's unnaturally-shaped hand, and it fell to the floor, scattering tiny black pellets everywhere. For a moment, neither being moved, and only the fish, impatient for their dinner, swam around in their tank; after a few moments, though, the black, oozing creature squelched forward, reaching its tendrils forward, the sharp, spade-shaped ends whipping about curiously; the space around it seemed to distort and flicker like a heat-haze. The human recovered its senses and started to run--or tried to, anyway, before the thick tendrils caught it by the legs, slamming it to the ground hard. It squeezed, and the sharp ends of it dug deep into the human's flesh, severing its legs. The man howled horribly, and this seemed to only annoy the creature further. It snarled as its tendrils snaked further up the man's body, flaying the flesh and chopping through the bone in a fury of splinters piercing skin, trying furiously to find a way to silence the squalling, foul little beast on the ground as it wailed and whimpered, its voice broken from straining its feeble vocal cords.

Finally, he fell silent when the monstrous creature sank its bladed tendrils into his skull and started poking around in the strange fluid and meat that it found there. It probed through fleeting memories and dying thoughts, ranging from a flash of some song and a panicked whine of some litany to a false god. It didn't understand the images and words presented to it; they were all alien things from an alien place and time. But it did understand that, apparently, this was the center of the pink creature's being. It gurgled and dug the blades further into the man's brain, scooping out the slowly-shifting chemicals and fluids. That must have been what made up a _being_ in this place, the stuff of thought and memory. It smelled foul, and the sound of the man's death was excruciatingly loud, as each cell in his system gasped its last. Space shifted and flickered around the gelatinous beast again, and the gray fluid dripped onto the floor.

It didn't like this place.

It liked its no-place a lot more.

It was quiet there--restful, dark, beautiful.

This place was extremely loud and bothersome, its creatures ugly and bleating nonsense at it, from the tiny flickering things that roamed across its shining, wet eyes to the broken, bloodied pink creature on the ground.

No, it didn't like all this noise, all this assault on its senses.

This could be solved rather easily, though. No matter at all. All this disgusting, noisy _existing_ going on in this nasty place could be reduced to dust and silence soon enough. And then it would have a new home, a beautiful new place to rest in.

-------------------------------------------------

A slight chill in the morning air spelled the impending end of the Indian summer. It had been an early shift for Officer Ian Moffat, and it had so far been extremely uneventful, much to his annoyance. He hated slow days. Not that he held any delusions about police work always being exciting, high-adrenaline work, or that he was some kind of mad totalitarian force, looking for someone to step out of line so he could punish them swiftly and mercilessly; that wasn't why he had gotten into that profession at all. He just didn't like the waiting part; he didn't like driving around in broad circles, didn't like passing the empty storefronts, didn't like the monotony of it all. Officer Moffat wasn't a patient fella by nature; he knew that about himself, and while it bothered him sometimes, he had come to accept it in his twenty-six years in the world. Nothing you could do about it, really.

He pulled the cruiser into an empty alley and took his breakfast out of the glove box. Breakfast in this case consisted of an untoasted frosted strawberry Pop-Tart and a swig of banana-flavored milk from a small bottle--both things having been purchased at a gas station about half an hour ago. He ate quickly, hardly tasting either item, simply eating to quiet his loudly grumbling stomach, and stared blankly at the boarded-up storefront across the street.

Officer Moffat was not normally the kind of guy to wonder about mystical nonsense. He was a practical, down-to-earth sort. He was alive, and that was good enough for him; he didn't bother with taking the time to sit around and ponder existential mysteries, as he felt it was a waste of time. Hey, shit, what else did you want? Existence should have been enough to make anybody happy, what with the multitude of glorious, fascinating possibilities it brought each day in life. Just lately, though, he had been thinking about mystic bullshit a lot more. Recent events had caused him to call it all into question, chiefly as to whether it really _was_ a load of bullshit or whether it called for closer scrutiny. He took another swig of banana-flavored milk and watched a little old lady slowly scrape down the sidewalk with her walker, which was cheerily festooned with a whole rainbow of colorful ribbons and little shining silver bells--silent, of course, from where he sat in the car. The radio crackled and chattered nonsense between other officers, and he turned it down just a hair. Too damn loud.

He finished up his breakfast. Ten more minutes of his break left, barring anything exciting and interesting happening. In any decent narrative, this would have been the cue for a truckful of armed jewel thieves to go screaming past on the road, with a whole squadron of police cars trailing along behind them, sirens screaming. But it wasn't, so it didn't. The old lady scraped along until she vanished out of sight, and that was it. Dead places. Hated patrolling through dead places. Officer Moffat frowned and rested his forearms on the steering wheel, then rested his head on his muscular arms with a slightly frustrated grunt, though he still kept his sharp, alert green eyes on the scene in front of him, and occasionally looked back at his wristwatch, wanting to make sure he went back to his duty precisely on time.

His stomach grumbled.

"Quiet," he said, as if that would really do anything. Seven minutes of his break left. His mind wandered a bit. That sailor-girly--Megan? Was that her name? Moffat couldn't recall. Something that started with an 'M,' anyway. He wondered what she was up to, if she was abiding the law or not, and that made him wonder if she had been actually real, or whether she had been a particularly fuckin' strange fever-dream--but of course, he knew that it _hadn't_ been a dream in any way; he wasn't one for self-deception--and that made him wonder about the slick, rubbery, blank-faced things (a shiver ran down his spine, and he shifted in his seat uneasily), and that made him think of the other two. He wondered what those two were up to. There had been something about those two that wasn't entirely _right_--there was something in the purple-ribboned girl's blue eyes that was fading to utter vapidity and vacancy, for one. The yellow-ribboned one--the girl with the enormous gun--had had a curious, bright flicker in her gray eyes, despite her seemingly nervous manner--about as dissimilar as possible from the one with the purple ribbon. 'Sigma.' That was what the bastard in the leather jacket had called that one. Moffat didn't like that guy, either. While he was pretty sure of what bothered him about Sigma, he _wasn't_ sure of what was so strange and wrong about her boss. Just… something. Something that wasn't _natural_.

Officer Moffat looked at his wristwatch again. Four minutes. Enough break for his tastes; he was restless. He started up the car again, checked for traffic, and then pulled out into the street. Another careful, watchful patrol of an empty place.

The radio crackled a bit, and Moffat turned it up so he could hear it. Feedback shrieked and squealed for a moment; he pressed one hand over his ear, frowning, and using the other hand, fiddled with the dials a little bit so he could hear the message. After a minute or so of fiddling about with it, the noise resolved itself into a fractured, incoherent report from another officer, who seemed very confused and disoriented; the only understandable thing was a terrified, weak whimper for help. That was worrisome. Feedback shrieked again, for no apparent reason, and a loud, unearthly buzzing noise howled from the other end for a moment (what was with it today?)… After a moment or two, Moffat got the walkie-talkie under control again and proceeded to deliver his message to dispatch; he was going to assist the disoriented, confused officer. Briefly, he wondered why dispatch hadn't delivered an immediate request for assistance to the fella… he sounded pretty bad off, after all. The LAPD wasn't _that_ understaffed or inattentive, surely, that they couldn't spare a couple fellas to help with an officer down or simply in need of backup. Oh well. Moffat was going to help, regardless. Had to. He replaced the walkie-talkie in its little cradle on the dashboard and turned on the lights and sirens in order to speed over to assist his fellow officer.

After a moment there came the distant, though still audible, crackling of gunshots. _Fuck_. A very faint, frightened cry came from over the radio after it, from the same incoherently-babbling officer from before; he weakly whimpered something that Moffat couldn't understand, followed by frenzied weeping and howling--and then that ugly hum again, and then silence. Troubling, all this. The shots--that wasn't a good sign at all, no matter who was doing the shooting--whether it was the officer or the offender. And what the hell could have put that guy in such a state of incoherent panic? Officers were generally selected for their ability to remain calm in trying situations, for their mental stability and cool heads. Sure, Moffat could feel the adrenaline coursing through his system whenever he responded to a call--shit, that was part of why he liked being an officer, the thrill of doing what was right, the thrill of heroism--but he wasn't likely to start panicking, and he certainly wasn't about to start crying over that kind of shit. What scared the shit so thoroughly out of that other officer? He'd find out, he supposed, soon enough.

There was another police cruiser parked outside of a small, cutely-decorated house--looked like a fuckin' gingerbread cabin--and it was empty. In fact… He rolled down his window and surveyed his surroundings carefully. The entire _street_ was as deserted as the surface of the moon. The sirens weren't shrieking, the lights weren't flashing. Silent like a grave. Except…

Moffat could still hear that weird buzzing, crackling hum. It was low and constant, and he could _just_ hear it, at the very edge of his hearing. His own breathing was slightly louder; if he held his breath a moment, he could hear the hum louder and clearer.

There were other signs that something wasn't right. Thick black tire-skids lined the street, and the air smelled faintly of burning rubber even now; the other officer had sure gotten over here in a hurry. The doors of the car hung open--though it didn't look like it had been opened in the regular way, or even shoved open just a little too hard, the way that a strong person in a really big hurry might open it. He slowed his own car down and stepped on the brake, peering out of the window. No--the doors looked like they had been _ripped_ open, and were hanging on by mangled bits of steel. Moffat carefully reached for his gun--just in case--turned off his car, and climbed out of it slowly, looking around. Situational awareness. Best thing to have in this line of work.

Finding no immediate, obvious threat, he crept over to the other car, his large hands still tight around the cold steel of the gun. Nobody in the car, although the keys were still in the ignition and the radio still crackled, the dispatcher placidly giving out the necessary information about the next emergency. He tuned it out for a moment and examined what else remained in the car--a half-eaten bacon and egg McMuffin in its grease-stained wrapper on the passenger seat, a bottle of Diet Sprite with maybe a swallow left in it, a sudoku book open to the hard puzzles, and a blue mechanical pencil. Moffat was careful not to touch anything, just in case. He looked in the backseat, too, and found nothing there. The other fella might've just gone into some kind citizen's house to take a shit, for all he knew.

But his mind kept circling back around to the open doors, and it occurred to him that this wasn't _right_ in any way.

He had heard gunshots on the way over, and those tended to draw a lot of attention. Onlookers--sometimes they'd spill onto the street and gawk openly at what was going on, sometimes they'd just press their faces to their windows and peer curiously or fearfully at what was going on in the streets. But he hadn't seen a single soul. Not even the panic-stricken officer who he had come to assist in the first place. Nobody. It was dead out here. _Maybe in more ways than one_. The stray, idle thought sent an icy chill up his spine.

Then there was dispatch; there hadn't been a word about the shots being fired at this location, nor had they put out a call for the officer requesting backup, or called for someone from the fire department with an ambulance to check up on the madly-babbling man on the other end of the radio. That was weird. No reports or requests, not even acknowledgement of the terrified, screaming (_dying_?) man at the other end of the radio. _Not one word_.

Moffat squeezed the grip of his gun tightly, then hesitantly put it back into its holster. Time to question the folks of the neighborhood… _if there are any folks left in the neighborhood_, his mind added, although he wasn't certain why. The thought made him uneasy. He wasn't used to feeling uneasy on the job. Oh, sure, he was always cautious and careful--Mr and Mrs Moffat didn't raise no fools--but it was a matter of practicality rather than a matter of fear. Fear didn't get you very far if you were an officer of the law. It usually got you disgraced, endangered, or dead, simply because if you were afraid, you wouldn't be thinking quite as clearly; it paved the way for an easy panic. Maybe that was what had happened to the officer out here. Maybe he had run away in fear. From what, though? _Best not to come up with your theories yet, Officer; that's putting the cart before the horse_, he scolded himself. A rational investigation came first.

His boots thumped loudly as he stepped up on the wooden steps of the cute little house, the one that looked like a gingerbread cabin. There was an empty rocking-chair off to the left part of the porch; the lightly-colored wood looked awful rickety, and its seat held a very thin cushion, yellow with the pollen from ten past springs. There was also a pair of ancient floral-print galoshes and a gray watering-can full of cobwebs right next to the doormat, which was made of spiky green plastic and had a flattened thick plastic daisy in the upper-right corner. Jeez. Corny.

He rang the bell, but he didn't hear it make any noise at all; after a minute's wait, he knocked on the door loudly; it fell off of its hinges and thudded onto the slightly dusty hardwood floor, like in a fucking cartoon. Suspicious. He reached for his gun again--largely for the comfort of the cold steel. There was something heavy and awful about this place, and he didn't like that shit at all. Good to have a gun at the ready, _even if it doesn't do any good_, his mind felt like adding. A shiver ran down his spine again; the image of the blank black figures had risen to his mind. They hadn't really responded to anything but the yellow sailor-girl's gun and that arc of purple lightning; the pepper spray had held them up for a few second, but that had been it. His bullets hadn't done jack shit except comfort him, made him feel as though he had some power and control--even if it was obvious he didn't.

There was a creak of the floorboards upstairs, and the soft, shuffling thump of old footsteps. They didn't sound normal, though. Out of synch, somehow; they seemed to echo, as if this were a dark alley at midnight in a goddamn Stephen King novel instead of being a cute little two-story house in the early morning. The sun had risen, and the world was still spinning. Monsters disappeared at dawn, didn't they? _Not necessarily_, he answered himself--otherwise, there'd be no work for the police, would there?

"Police department," he said loudly. "I'd like to ask you a few questions, if I could. Please come downstairs right now."

More weird echoing steps, thumping down the stairs now, but still no verbal response… no, wait. There was a dusty choking noise, then a throaty gurgle. It was a noise of some kind, anyway, even if it wasn't a cooperative "sure, officer," or a meth-fueled rant. More shuffling, echoing steps. Who--_what_--ever it was, it was slow, as if it didn't quite have the hang of walking--like an extremely elderly person or toddler.

Then he saw why.

It wasn't _entirely_ a person. It had the naked upper half of an almost emaciated-looking human (he couldn't even tell whether it was male or female), mostly, but it was just wrong all over; it had a mass of slippery, utterly-black eyes growing all over its body, a toothy pair of mouths that quite literally went from ear-to-ear, extremely long, thin arms ending in sharp, vicious talons, and a writhing, wriggling mass of whisper-thin, tendrils at the bottom half of its unnatural, abominable body. That was what had been making the noise; it hadn't been the curious echo of just two footsteps, it had been _hundreds_ of tiny footsteps shuffling around on the wood. The movement of its body was as though it was a shaky, jerking stop-motion puppet, a flickering slow-motion effect, but this didn't lessen how disturbing it was at all. If anything, that made it worse. Its skin was a soft nut-brown color in a couple of places, but starting to morph into a gelatinous black material in other places, like around its horrid claws. The black, gelatinous condition of the skin seemed to be spreading to other places the longer he looked at it… not only on the beast's body, but on the floor, as well. There seemed to be a grayish slime trailing the polished hardwood, and it was turning black. It didn't melt or smoke or anything, but it was a shining matte-black, enveloped by a shimmering, flickering heat-haze; it was like the creature's movements were burning superheated holes in the fabric of space. He managed to conquer his gag reflex for a moment and choke out a few words himself.

"Uh. So. Have you seen another officer around here?" he inquired. There were rules and procedures in this profession, and they had to be followed, no matter what grotesque thing he was looking at. He determinedly stared at a broken vase of gaudy, brightly-colored plastic daisies on a little stand near the door. "I received a request for assistance from another officer and I'm havin' a hell of a time finding him." The thing slithered down another couple of steps and onto the floor. He ground his teeth a bit, one eye twitching slightly, and focused harder on the ugly plastic daisies in the corner. _Don't look at it. Remain calm. Don't bring it up, you might provoke it_, he lectured himself, again fighting with his gag reflex. It took a step closer, he noticed that the thing's gelatinous, slender legs made little squelching noises when it walked… slithered… slid… ambulated. Moved. Whatever.

It gurgled nastily again, as if trying its damnedest to form sounds that could have created words of some sort. It wasn't attacking him; maybe it wasn't _entirely_ malevolent, no matter how utterly disgusting it looked. He wished he could shoot it, just to make it go away, but that wasn't the right thing to do--it had given him no reason to shoot at it. Yet. It gurgled again and opened its mouths in a most awful smile. Another creature with far too many sharp little needle-teeth lining its gums; the gums looked as though they were rotting away. They were gray-green, fading to that slimy obsidian color, pulled away from the teeth set very precariously in them, and smelled horribly, even from about ten feet away where Officer Moffat stood.

More gurgling. Something that sounded like a word escaped its lipless maw, but he couldn't make out what word it might've been. A foreign word, perhaps? He knew a handful of words from a handful of languages (chiefly simple things like "please" and "thank you" or "police officer"--and he knew the whole Miranda rights speech in Spanish) but he wasn't able to even _guess_ where this word might have come from. Usually, even if you didn't speak a particular language, you could at least guess what it was. Each language usually has a particular tone or inflection used when it's spoken--from the soft politeness of the Japanese language to the guttural growl of German--and sometimes particular words or syllables just stand out. But he couldn't identify _anything_ about that language or where it might have originated from.

"Um. I'm sorry, I don't speak your crazy moon language," he said, and then immediately slapped a palm to his face. _Stupid, don't sass the monster!_ he scolded himself.

Its mouth opened wider, and it moved closer, swinging out its long, glittering onyx claws at him; they caught the cuff of his sleeve and tore it before he backed out of the way quickly, back towards the door. _Good job, Officer_, he thought sarcastically. He backed all the way out of the house and drew his gun. He wasn't a fella who liked jumping to conclusions--he liked to have the facts, just the facts, ma'am--but there was some nagging feeling at the back of his mind that this critter had done something to the other officer. And maybe everyone else living on that street. It stank of blood and fear, even beyond the sick smell of its rotting carrion breath.

The critter was getting better at this whole 'walking' thing--it was moving a little more quickly, but retained the flickering, stuttering appearance as it started walking. Slithering. Sliding. Whatever you wanted to call its peculiar movement, it was slipping closer; it gave an awful screech and _sprung_ at Officer Moffat, who instinctively shot at it, throwing it just a few inches away--just close enough for a second's safety. It recovered in a flash and lunged at him again. He sprinted to his cruiser as fast as his long legs would carry him. Another shot to keep it back, and he was able to jump into the waiting car--thank god he'd left the door open. He slammed it shut just in time, just as the beast jumped, leaving a nasty spiderwebbing crack on the glass, as well as a glob of black ooze, and breaking off the mirror. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the mirror turn black and crumble into nothingness, seeming to peel away layer by layer. So that was what it could do… He felt grateful that he hadn't gotten more than a ripped sleeve out of it so far. He liked existing, thanks. It was nice.

"Fuck!" he said aloud. He wondered briefly what he should do. _Think, Officer_! he told himself frantically. Radio for help? Shit, who would believe him? 'Hey, dispatch, send a few officers out here, I'm dealing with a creepy-crawly squid-man that doesn't go down with the first few shots, how soon could we get some assistance over here?' And then there was also the chance of another officer ending up like the first poor stupid fuck that had called for help. Officer Moffat didn't know how that _was_, exactly, but he got the distinct impression that it hadn't been good. Bad enough that there was a chance _he_ could wind up that way, whatever way that was; he didn't want anybody else to be dragged into it.

That was why he hadn't started up the car and peeled off yet. The city was rising from sleep; the streets were more crowded now, with people heading off to work or school or play. If he just ran, he would've possibly endangered several hundred more people--he didn't know what the thing's problem was or how dangerous it really was, and there wasn't really much sense taking a chance, was there? He didn't need that on his conscience, thank you very much. A policeman's job was to protect the citizenry, and Ian Dennis Moffat was a man who took his job _very_ seriously.

The thing scratched and scrabbled on the windshield, and the spiderweb crack on the glass spread further. Black, oily ooze slathered onto the hood of his car, and he heard hissing. Like acid eating its way through metal… above the hood, a haze flickered and danced before his eyes. Another scratch from the creature, and the broken windshield shattered in on Officer Moffat, who snarled in pain as the glass showered on him, cutting his arm and his face. He ground his teeth and started the car; he threw it in reverse and tried to run over the creature--it could shake off bullets, but perhaps it'd be less frisky after being crushed by a ton and a half of Detroit steel. He stomped on the gas hard and smashed back into the decrepit-looking brown Cadillac behind him. The creature was flung backwards, slamming onto the other car. Success. He didn't stick around to look. Instead, he flicked it into drive, cranked up the lights and sirens, and screamed down the street, lying down long parallel lines of burning rubber as he sped away.

There was a sound of crunching glass and the rasping gurgle of melting metal from up front of the car. If that black ooze was doing what he thought… he wondered how long the police car had to go, how long the motor would hold out before flickering out of existence and leaving him a sitting duck. He glanced up at the rearview mirror--_fuck_! It was following him, sliding slickly along the ground like a serpent; dimly, he could see the street starting to _evaporate_ around the trail it left. He frowned sourly and mumbled to himself. First the blank-black nightmare things from the other night, and now this. At least at that time, the sailor-girly had been able to get rid of the damn things. The speedometer ticked higher, nearing its upper limit as he careened off towards… wherever he was going. He didn't want to lead it into a more populous area, didn't want it to get to other people. But did he have much of a choice…? This was, after all, one of the biggest, most crowded cities in the country.

He wondered what that creature _was_, what it was doing, why it was even here… why it was so pissed off. Maybe it had understood Moffat's sassing it, even if Moffat himself hadn't understood _its_ language? Tough crowd.

He swerved madly, narrowly avoiding smashing another car parked on the side of the street, then whipped the car around. He was trying to avoid going into an even more populous part of town. _Protect and serve_, he thought grimly. Man, where was the sailor-girly? Didn't superheroes in movies always show up at just the right time to help the police to save the innocent bystanders? He really could have used that sort of thing just now.

Until then, he would run. The thought of it made his skin crawl. Made him feel like a horrible coward, the slime of the earth, running away and possibly leading it into a more populated area. But there wasn't much else he could do; he'd tried shooting the goddamn thing, he'd tried to run it over with only minimal success… _nothing left to do but run, run, run._

----------------------------------------

The curly-haired man leaned on the corner of the flat roof, his elbows propped up against the edge and his fingers tented; he wore a studious expression on his handsome face. He had gone 'out' again; that was the best way that Sailor Sigma could think of to explain it. He didn't just let his mind _wander_, no; it was as if his mind left his body entirely and went off on holiday to another place entirely for brief periods of time. Sigma, as a teenager, had been interested in channeling and psychic phenomena. She had attended several séances and seen the mediums conducting them trance out and claim to speak with the voices of the dead, but this wasn't quite the same; he was fully aware of things that were happening to him, things that Sigma was doing nearby, but all the same, he'd be _out_, somewhere else, surveying things from a distance. It was difficult to explain. He just seemed to _leave_ for awhile, while remaining fully present and aware.

He had _left_ about forty-five minutes ago now, and she was anxious for him to return. Mr Fairchild might have liked climbing up to high places like rooftops and steeples to watch things going on down below, but she wasn't quite as fond of heights. (Secretly, she thought that he only did it because it was dramatic and looked really cool, but she wasn't about to tell _him_ that.) In fact, fifteen of those forty-five minutes had been spent hiding behind Mr Fairchild and trying to avoid looking down. He had quietly ordered her to open her eyes and to look, and so she had. Because he had ordered her to. The view had made her rather queasy at first, but she'd more-or-less adjusted to it by now. More or less.

She quite liked Mr Fairchild. He could be stern at times, but he was very kindhearted, and very honest. He really _had_ given her precisely what he'd promised to her. That wasn't something you ran into every day--honesty. He had promised her power, and so he had given it to her, just as he'd said. Power--that little crystal, which he called "our covenant," had given her strange, special powers, had changed her. Though she wasn't fond of the uniform, he had said it flattered her and looked lovely on her. He had been working on training her for the past couple of days, as his chosen one. She smiled at the thought and blushed a little. She had been _chosen_. _Marked_ as his--his soldier, Sailor Sigma. She'd never been chosen for anything before; she wasn't special. But he treated her like a mythic princess, as though she _were _special. She loved it, and tried to return all the attention he gave to her. It was only fair, and it was a beautiful thing.

It had upset her to meet Sailor--Epsilon? Was that it? The pudgy girl with the yellow ribbons and the glasses. It made her feel less special knowing that there was another one. Sigma frowned a little at the thought. For three days, she had been the only one--excepting the man himself--with these kinds of vast powers. Now there was another one out there kicking around. That was a terrifying thought. What if Mr Fairchild were looking for a replacement already--if she wasn't good enough? If she had been the wrong one after all? She twirled a lock of dirty-blond hair around her finger fretfully. She didn't know what she'd do if she lost these powers--the only thing that made her special--and if Mr Fairchild went away--the only person who thought she was worth anything at all. Go mad, probably. Well, then--she would just have to work harder to impress him, to be his Chosen One, to live up to--no, _exceed_--all of his expectations, so that those rich brown eyes didn't stray anywhere else.

Mr Fairchild had not explained this to her, not even when they had gone back home together that night. 'Home' was the place that he had chosen for them. She had shyly wished for someplace safe to keep the night, figuring that he would choose a small apartment, the bare minimum; instead, he had selected an enormous house, a small mansion, up on top of a great hill overlooking the city and the ocean beyond. There were nine rooms in the house, but only one of them was used--the master bedroom. She had been rather hesitant at first. He slept on a vast bed with cloud-soft sheets, and he insisted that she sleep at the foot of it as well. So she had--she had curled up at the foot of his bed every night, like a good little pet, and slept peacefully, knowing that she was safe with him.

He hadn't explained it. But he had hinted at a game of a sort, and said, with his charming smile, his rich, dark prince's voice, that she was his trump card. The best that Sigma could think of was that perhaps Sailor Epsilon was their enemy--a rival player. Of course, she would have to be taken out of play. That would probably please him immensely. Yes.

Down below, a car's tires screeched. There was a crunch and a shatter, a scream of metal, and Mr Fairchild returned to himself, a grin splitting his handsome face. He stood up, dusting off his leather jacket, and grasped Sigma on the shoulder, pulling her close to his body.

"What we're going to do, Sig, is we're gonna follow this little critter. We won't attack it _just_ yet--we'll just follow and observe. 'Port us out about… tsh… two miles or so, out to the south--to the desert. Then we'll follow it wherever it decides to roam, and we'll use it for target practice once we've gathered all of our relevant data on it. Think you're up for that?"

"Oh, yes, right away!" she said eagerly. The woman was eager to show off her new teleporting skills; while he was Out earlier, she had put in some practice, using herself as a guinea pig. He would probably be impressed with that, yes; he would admire that dedication to the job. And then he would keep her forever.

Teleportation was the newest trick he was trying to teach her; it was a handy way to get around.

First, he had gotten her to practice on small objects--apples and books and such--and worked up from there. Teleportation was one of the more difficult feats of magic, really. Throwing lightning was easy; all it required was a bit of focus and a bit of willpower, and all you really risked was zapping something you didn't intend to. You could just peel the blackened crust off of just such an object, no harm done. But if you teleported wrong--materialized into an occupied space--the results were _messy_ to say the least. She had teleported a live rat into an occupied space once; he had ordered her to do so, in order to illustrate a lesson. Sigma hadn't wanted to. His brown eyes had flared almost red; his smooth, pleasant voice had turned into a nasty, guttural rumble as he demanded it of her again. Apologetic, and a little bit frightened, she had obeyed him hastily the second time he gave the order. That was the only time she had to be told to do something twice, because she had learned her lesson. Never again did she want to see those fearful eyes and hear that dark, angry voice. She didn't want to disappoint him. No way.

And so she had teleported the live rat into an occupied space, and it had exploded, splattering brain matter and blood and bits of bone all over the wall, screaming and wailing in the way that small animals do. It had screamed for just a moment and then gone silent, but it had echoed in her mind. Creepy. Terrifying. Horrible. 'And that, my dear, is why we did not try to teleport _ourselves_ on the first try. I wouldn't want _you_ to go pop like that,' he had soothed her cheerily, with a grin on his face, patting her dirty-blond hair.

"That's my girl," he said warmly. His hand found its way into hers, lacing their fingers together; she blushed a bit and concentrated on an empty place. An empty place. Empty place. Empty place… Empty place…

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Officer Moffat's cruiser fishtailed wildly around in the street. He was still trying his goddamn hardest to escape that ugly critter. It seemed to have focused in on his car, which was on its last legs. The roof was peeling open like a sardine-can's lid; the lights and sirens were grinding and murmuring as they were eaten away by the black ooze, vanishing into the ether. The hood of the car was vanishing, too, and if the hood went, the engine would be eaten away pretty quickly. Soon, he would have to abandon the car and start running for his life--or badge-hijack some unfortunate passerby's car or motorcycle or something. Vainly, he wished that he could find the sailor-girl. Epsilon. That was her title. Sailor Epsilon. Her gun had been effective against the nightmare-beasts a few nights ago when his hadn't; maybe that gun would work again. But he didn't even know where to start looking for her. At any rate, he was out of ideas. He'd shot the damn thing and pepper-sprayed it in its nasty, wet, slimy black eyes--it had gotten close enough once--but it was undeterred, still slithering along behind him and spraying that ugly black acid-stuff onto cars and roads and people on the sidewalk. Moffat felt like the slime of the earth once more for having led it out of the empty place in which he'd found it.

He slammed on the brakes very suddenly; the tires screeched against the dry blacktop, laying down some lines. Then he backed over the creature with the car. There was a dull thump and a wet crunching noise, sort of like the sound a smashing pumpkin makes, as its great awful head was crushed underneath the back wheels. _Bingo_, he thought to himself with a tired grin. He got the feeling that it wasn't going down that easily, but this bought him some time, time enough to think. What he really wanted to do was track down a sailor-girly--either one of them would have done. But he knew the yellow one's name… sort of. It was Megan or Morgan or Marjorie. Something cute like that, started with an "M," and he recalled that her last name was MacBride. At the very least, he could _try_ to find her, try to ask for her help. Because he needed it. There was no other way he could hold the thing off on his own. He had tried, and he had failed at it. But he had bought the city at least a few minutes' worth of time. He braked again and opened the door, careful to jump over the black, devouring slime to the safety of the sidewalk. With his long legs, this was relatively easy.

"You!" he said, turning to the first person he met. Fortune had it that it was an old woman paused, staring, at the crawling black thing, keys in her hand, halfway to unlocking an old, ill-repaired Buick. "I need your car." He flashed his badge. "You get to safety, ma'am. This thing is dangerous, and we can't have you wandering the streets." He raised his voice, addressing the other people in the area. "That goes for all of you. Get inside this fucking instant."

For once, nobody resisted or argued, perhaps because they saw that the black mass was eating away at two cars in the middle of the road, as well as the road itself. People started piling into stores and apartments, even those belonging to strangers; nobody seemed to have any problem with this at the moment, instead grouping together out of fear for their lives. It broke his heart to see people so terrified for their existences. Moffat wished that he had some words to comfort them.

He could have assured them that everything was gonna be just fine in a few moments.

But he disapproved of lying.

He started the borrowed Buick and drove it up onto the emptied sidewalk, avoiding the black, pulsating mess in the middle of the street, the mess that had eaten his own car and was quickly working its way through the blacktop. Now… to find the sailor-girl. If he could. He had to at least _try_, in order to protect his city; he would have to demand her assistance. She had said, after all, that she would cooperate with the law, and he _was_ the law. She would have to, and he would help her the best he could, even knowing how dangerous it was going to be. Moffat was not the sort to go down with a whimper, huddling in the corner and begging. He wouldn't. No. If he was going to die, if he was going to be erased from existence, he would at least go down fighting.

Now what was her name… Megan…?

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Morgan MacBride was, in fact, at work at that moment. First delivery of the day. She put the carefully-wrapped box of cupcakes in the basket of her bicycle, strapped on her helmet (safety first) and climbed onto the bike. It was an old thing, but it worked just fine; she'd salvaged it from a dumpster and restored it the best she could. The same could be said for a lot of things that she owned, like every piece of furniture in her ratty little apartment, and even the blue tennis shoes on her feet (they had been perched on top of a trashcan lid, and they were clean, and in her size--she'd seen no harm in it, so she'd just taken them). La Reve Patisserie didn't pay all that well, but hey, it was a job, wasn't it? Had to be grateful for what one could get, especially in hard times like this. She sighed. Gratitude didn't mean you had to _like_ it, of course. It wasn't the work itself that she minded; it was the monotony of being a responsible adult and a Good Girl.

As she started pedaling towards her destination, her mind flicked back to three days ago. The silvery shooting star. That incident had only caused her to long even _more_ for a life of adventure and interesting stories. If anybody would have believed her, that night would've made a very interesting story; at last, she would have something fascinating to say about herself. If only people could have been able to believe such stories--magical sailor girls, rubbery blank-black figures, tiny marching spiders, weaving webs of nightmares. Magic. She turned a corner and started to pedal uphill, huffing and panting as she did. Morgan _did_ do bicycle deliveries for a living, but that had been something that had started only recently. She still wasn't really the model of physical fitness--being unable to afford much more than a diet of ramen noodles and an occasional bottle of vitamin water, and having been far too fond of eating copious amounts of junk food in her childhood--and going up steep hills on the bike still often got her out of breath.

She had transformed again yesterday. There had been no reason to--she had just wanted to make sure it wasn't a mad, fevered dream. She sort of wished that she could be a superhero--clearly, that was who the crystal was intended for, a hero. But somehow, it had wound up in her hands instead--some kind of cosmic mistake. Morgan wasn't really hero material. The night before, she had considered it--but no matter how much she wanted to just drop her boring, dull life as Morgan MacBride to become Sailor Epsilon, there was the fact that she had other responsibilities. She cringed at the word. Bane of her existence. Responsibility. Good behavior. There was a ratty little apartment with rent and bills due at the beginning of each month, and she already had enough trouble trying to scrape that much together. There was a little old couple that expected her to be at work to deliver cakes and cookies every morning starting at 8AM sharp--and she was always early, just to be sure that her job was safe. There was a paycheck to be earned. Parents to please. And besides which, she didn't really have the confidence to run around in the middle of the night in a short little skirt.

She huffed as she crested the hill and then breathed easy. Downhill, down the sidewalk. This was an easy delivery; just the little birthday cupcakes for a small Montessori preschool that was just about five blocks away, over a hill, from the patisserie. La Reve straddled the line right between downtown and western Los Angeles, and it delivered chiefly to those areas; this was the closest part of the Westside. She made it every morning before the school hours started. The birthday cupcakes sounded really weird, but the lady who ran the school assured her that zucchini and chocolate cake was extremely rich and moist; Morgan had never been brave enough to try it. Coasting. The crisp autumn wind blew through her russet-brown hair and ruffled the yellow ribbon headband that she wore every day. It felt nice. Soaring, almost free, if just for a moment.

Squeezing the bike's hand-brake, she came to a stop in front of the Montessori preschool, and hopped off of the bike, wheeling it in through the green chain-link gate. A few children--early arrivals--watched her pass without much interest. They were building a sand-castle in the sandbox, and she felt a little bit of envy; she'd never learned how to build a sand-castle, and she figured that the opportunity was probably lost now that she was a grown-up. She didn't really miss being a kid--her childhood had been extremely dull--and she didn't want any of her own. Taking care of children was deadly dull. Mrs Linda, the principal and primary teacher here, had gotten her to look after the fifteen students there for short periods of time when she had to take phone calls and such, and she always came away from it feeling equal parts bored and disgusted. The door of the little schoolhouse opened, and Mrs Linda's cheery apple-cheeked face appeared; Morgan honestly couldn't remember a single time where she hadn't been smiling, and she found it mildly unnerving. Like a bloody Stepford wife.

"The birthday cakes are here!" she said cheerily, as if this were some grand surprise. Morgan supposed she had to keep that up to surprise the birthday kids. She held up the box with the little cakes and smiled wearily as Mrs Linda took the box. "Thank you, Miss Morgan."

"No problem," she said mildly, waving at Mrs Linda. The door closed again, leaving Morgan alone on the steps. She sighed again and went back to the bicycle by the gate.

She wished something exciting would happen. Adventure in the middle of the city. Just one more time, so she could feel the warm light wrap around her, forming the frilly sailor outfit, feel the warm steel of the human-portable Gatling that she had summoned before, feel the _power_ of being Sailor Epsilon, the excitement, the energy--the _magic _of it all. But there was really no reason to transform right now, was there? A grand, cosmic mistake, giving a superhero's powers to her--not only was she simply not hero material, nothing exciting ever happened to her anyway, much to her dismay. She huffed quietly and climbed back onto her bike, ready to pedal over the hill and back to La Reve again. Circling. In the distance, she heard tires screaming against the blacktop, and she wondered who was in such a doggone hurry.

----------------------------------------------------------

Officer Moffat was speeding through the central part of the city, hoping against hope that he would find the sailor-girly out here. Maybe he'd recognize a passing face on the street. A last-ditch, desperate effort. In the pit of his stomach, he felt that the critter wasn't far behind, although he hadn't been able to see it for miles now. If he'd had more time, he could have gone to a records office and looked for her that way--the efficient, simple, smart way. But he simply didn't have the time, so he was forced to search in another way--the inefficient madman's way of doing things. Desperate times, desperate measures, and all that.

He knew three things about her, none of them _particularly _useful. He remembered her face, but that wasn't any help because she just looked average; it was the sort of face that could easily be lost in a crowd. Oh, he thought she was sort of cute because of it, but the fact remained that she was a bit plain, really. He remembered her name, more-or-less, but that wasn't any help because she likely wouldn't have it tattooed on her forehead for easy ID, and he wasn't so mad as to go shouting it out of the windows or anything. And he remembered that, in her sailor-form, she carried a chain-gun that was as big as she was. That would have been pretty hard to miss. Of course, she might not be Sailor-Girly right now, so he would have to go by face and name; superheroes, of course, were not always running around town in their heroic shapes. Even Superman had a day job. He briefly wondered what a magical girl with a magical Gatling gun would have done for her day job. Probably something glamorous. Jetsetting heiress or intrepid girl journalist, or something. They always did conveniently-related and glamorous things in movies, didn't they?

His sharp green eyes darted about wildly, checking the crowds on the street as he drove. Dispatch went on coolly and calmly with giving out orders and information, seeming to ignore everything that he was doing, as if he didn't exist anymore. What a fuckin' creepy thought. Still, being ignored was just fine with him for this morning. If they were ignoring him so completely, they couldn't discipline him for anything that he was doing today.

He swung a hard right, narrowly avoiding a young lady on a pea-green bicycle, who was crossing the street at the same time (granted, she had the right of way, but there was hardly time to worry now--anyway, he _hadn't_ hit her; he felt a world-class ass for ignoring her--wait--). She went tumbling off of the bike and onto the sidewalk in surprise, sitting up and rubbing her leg, which had gotten rather scraped-up when she fell across the rough pavement. Officer Moffat slammed on the brakes, looking back over his shoulder. The girl on the bike had the same color of hair and the same odd style of yellow ribbon headband. Maybe…

He threw the mangled door open and scrambled over to her quickly. Morgan squinted as she licked a finger and rubbed her scraped leg, cleaning it of dust and gravel and little beads of blood; her glasses had been tossed off of her face when she'd swerved and gone flying over the curb to avoid the car, and she couldn't see that well at the moment. A hand held out the folded-up, scuffed glasses to her. She took them and put them on, then resumed trying to clean up the scrape on her leg.

"Megan?!" he asked urgently.

"It's Morgan, sir," she corrected idly, looking up at him. She jumped a little. The fella from a few nights ago--except now he was a bit more cleanly-shaven, wore a police uniform with one sleeve torn to shreds, and he had several cuts on his arm and a few on his face. She wondered what kind of fight he had just been in, poor guy. Looked like it had been a nasty one. Her eyes flicked over to the car, which looked rather worse for the wear, too. Instead of a patrol car, though, it was a maroon Buick with some black substance eating through the hood. Its tires were well on their way to being little puddles, too. A shimmering halo jumped and danced around the black substance, and the car seemed to slowly start vanishing before her eyes, into the ether--like it was fading away into that shimmering halo and dissipating into nothing.

"Damn. I knew it was somethin' like that." He scratched the back of his head and frowned for just a moment, then shook his head. "Anyway, look, I need your help." Morgan opened her mouth to say something--she was at work! It would reflect _very_ poorly on her if she skived off in the middle of the day without any permission or excuses! But… Then again… Officer Moffat interrupted her, loudly and impatiently, before she could get a single word out. "I haven't got all fuckin' day." She opened her mouth again; she was grateful that adventure had sought her out again, even if the adventure-bringer had almost plowed her over with his car, and she certainly _wanted_ to help... "You may have power, but I have authority as an officer of the law," he barked. "Unless you can fly away, I suggest comin' with me in the car right now."

For a moment, she idly wondered if she _could_ fly. She'd never tried before. Then she remembered the sailor outfit and its short skirt, and decided that she _couldn't_. She didn't want all the fine citizens of Los Angeles to see her undies; that would be _most_ improper.

"I was going to," she said agreeably. She had been raised to respect and listen to authority figures, and she had a peculiar fear of disobeying police officers anyway; there was a nagging, totally unfounded fear that if she disobeyed the orders of the police or the firefighters or the EMTs, if she ever needed them, they wouldn't come help her. So she had always cheerily gone along with the officer's orders. "I… it's just…" She tilted her head as she looked at the car. It looked like it was held together only by the thin and fragile strands of _hope_ right now. "It… just doesn't look that safe." He rolled his eyes and helped her to her feet.

"Look, I promise I won't kill us," he said. "You should worry more about that goddamn thing that's been chasing me all around Los Angeles."

"What thing?" she asked as he led her to the car. She felt bad for leaving her bike behind, and even worse for skiving off during work, but this seemed a rather more pressing matter. The officer opened the passenger-side car door for her and closed it behind her once she got inside, then went around to his own door, which he only closed after a great amount of difficulty; it wasn't hung on its hinges properly anymore, and it kept tipping off to the side at sort of a jagged angle. The engine snarled to life as he turned the key in the ignition, and he explained what had happened to him.

"The short of it--I responded to a call for help from a fellow officer and ran into a _thing_. Too many eyes, long squiggly legs, claws… and it oozes _that_ shit." He waved a hand at the stuff slowly eating through the car's hood. The engine was making labored, deathly noises. "I'm not sure what that shit really does. I think it's kinda like acid, maybe."

"Is that what cut up your arm--that… monster-thing?" she asked, concerned.

"No, that happened when it broke the window, sent the glass flyin' all over. I had just jumped in the car and fuckin' it comes on and breaks the goddamn door. I'm going to have a hell of a time explaining this to the powers that be," he grumbled.

"You should really get your arm and your face looked at," she said helpfully. "It looks pretty nasty."

"No time," he said dismissively. The cuts stung a bit, but they were nothing major--just shallow little scrapes. Morgan gazed out of the more-or-less intact passenger-side window. In all her life, she had never had to contact the police about anything, so it was odd sitting right next to a loud and (so far) rather bossy officer, in his car, whether you were in trouble or not. His general demeanor and the setting just made it feel as though she were in a whole heap of trouble. She found the feeling slightly bothersome. The girl fidgeted a bit in the seat and distractedly chewed at her left index-fingernail. Still…

"Maybe I should try to come up with a healing spell for you when I transform," she said, trying to break the awkward tension in the air. It was to be expected, really. The fella was mostly a stranger, and there's nothing quite as strange as going to fight monsters with complete strangers. She supposed that you didn't always wind up with all of your friends on your super-team--not that Morgan really had any friends to speak of, anyway. Saving a world full of strangers... The reality of it was rather different from the way they showed in comic books and television shows, wasn't it? A bit disappointing, she thought.

"Ehh." He imagined a healing spell gone wrong--skin attempting to knit itself back together, forming enormous bursting boils where only shallow cuts had been, erupting soft yellow pus all over his neatly-kept blue uniform, and a soft, cheery 'oh, sorry, Officer,' from some illusory sailor-girl, and it got progressively worse from there. Ian Moffat was cursed with a rather vivid imagination. Plus, he watched too many horror films. "Um. No, thanks. I'd rather not be the guinea pig for that, if it's all the same to you, miss."

"Oh." Another awkward, tense kind of pause. "So what's this monster been doing, anyway?"

"It fuckin' jumped me. _I_ was just trying to communicate with it, just trying to see if it could talk, so it could explain to me what happened to the officer and maybe what he'd gone to investigate, then it suddenly got all pissed off and started trying to kill me. I have a suspicion it mighta killed my colleague, too--or maybe _disappeared_ him. Him and a whole street of other folks… and some other things I drove past…" He rubbed his forehead a little, looking worried for a split second, then resolved his expression back into one of steely determination instead. "Anyway, I drove around for nigh-on two fuckin' hours, demolition-derby style, crashin' into shit all over the place, trying to crush it and keep it down. I finally flattened it, but I really get the feeling it's comin' back."

"For you?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "We just have to look for it and you have to get rid of it, before it kills or disappears or whatevers more people. I can't have that happening here--not in my city--and since I can't seem to kill it, the duty falls to you. Them's the brakes, girly." He flashed her a lopsided grin, trying his damnedest to look friendly; he wasn't sure how successful he was with this.

"Oh, I--I don't mind, Officer, sir," she said. "Um--I think--it's a bit more exciting than delivering birthday cupcakes." Though it would probably be her head if she got back to the owners of La Reve--how on earth would she explain it? 'Sorry, ma'am, went off to have an Adventure with a policeman, fighting a gelatinous reality-eating monster while dressed in a magical Halloween outfit.' She really wasn't very good at lying; she would be forced to tell them the cassandraic truth, and would be utterly unable to come up with a fascinating and believable lie.

"Is that what you do?" He snorted. "I figured superheroes were always either independent bazillionaires or ace roving reporters or something." Morgan's face turned pink. She wished that she could have made up something that sounded more glamorous and interesting. "You'll have to get me a discount." He turned left; the driver's-side door shuddered a bit on its mangled hinges. Gravity, or something, she supposed.

"Um. So. How long d'ya think it'll be until we find it?" she asked curiously.

"I'd suggest you settle in and get comfortable," he replied. "We could be awhile."

She smiled to herself a bit. Of course, she'd be in a heap of trouble when she got back to the patisserie. But just this once… just this once… it _almost_ felt okay. _Almost_. It felt dangerous and exciting; it was a terribly unfamiliar feeling for her, and a small part of her liked it--though it railed against her very nature.

He wished that he had his patrol car right now. If he had, he could have turned on the flashers and the sirens and screamed through the red lights and sped like the devil. They had to move quickly, but they were restricted in this borrowed Buick… still, he tried to speed as much as he could, even if it did entail driving like a lunatic. He didn't want anybody else to get killed or disappeared by this… _thing_. He simply wouldn't stand for such shenanigans--violence and chaos and such. Not in his city. Not now. Not _ever_. He was a policeman, and he had to protect the citizenry and maintain order. No matter what.

He had just gotten to thinkin' it over. This mystic bullshit would, hopefully, be one more line of defense for the city. She could be a valuable ally (his initial impulse had been that she could be a valuable _tool_, and he'd felt rather ashamed

immediately after that thought). In a way, he felt sort of responsible for her, even if he barely knew her; Megan--Morgan, rather--seemed to be new at this, new to using her powers, and he felt some responsibility to teach her, to guide her, on the way to using her power for what was good and right. He had given her a warning, but now, perhaps, it was time to give her guidance. Really, he wasn't fuckin' Obi-Wan--Ian was just a simple policeman, not really a hero or a Wise Old Mentor sort--but he could try his best, couldn't he? Protect and serve.

Moffat ran his hands through his hair.

God, he needed a cigarette, bad--the way that people in hell need ice-water.

------------------------------------------------

It felt nothing, and it knew nothing. It slid and darted across the rough pavement, leaving a trail of viscous black fluid. It had come to this place, and it was a _place_, different from the dead, dark, and silent spaces that it was used to. This place was too loud, too hot, too bright, too _alive_. It crawled with life and there was constant noise from all sides, pressing in, making it hurt. It had come to this plane, having decided to try existence for a short time. It hadn't liked that, hadn't liked that at all. It hadn't liked the noise--hadn't liked the pain. A timeless no-thing that had felt the decaying of life. It had felt its new _being_ decaying rapidly.

So it had eaten, so that it could soothe its pain, and to silence the foul pink creature at its claws. It had chewed the creature's flickering being away, hollowing out a shape for itself to take, to get a grip in this new place, start making a new, quiet, beautiful world that it would have all to itself. The black, growing, amorphous mass had tried to place itself in the space, but the hole that the creature left was uncomfortable; it simply didn't fit. It was a tight place, and so it had spilled right back out, being too large to fit, having too alien a shape.

Another creature, a blue creature, had come, hatching from a little metal egg and scuttling in. It had tried that one next, but found it even more uncomfortable. It had felt its matter degenerating, cells dying off by the billions every second that passed while it tried to _exist_. It didn't like the pain of decay, and it hadn't liked the cacophony of churning cells, either.

There had been another blue creature, and that one had escaped after attacking. So it had given chase, though that blue creature's metal egg had tried to crush it; no matter, it had been able to come back. It had no real thought about or memory of this happening. It had simply crawled back to the forest of black monoliths with only one impulse, one thing that, had it a brain, could have passed for thought--its mad mantra, repeated endlessly.

_No. No more._

_No. No more._

_No more of this heat and noise and bright light, none of it._

It had decided not to try to borrow skins and spaces anymore. No, it would just keep its beautiful shape, and it would devour this foul place--return it to dust and silence, the way it should be.

A shadow streaked across Los Angeles--ever-growing, as it dissolved everything in its path. Roads, lights, benches, buildings, buses, people. Places. Lives. Existences. Histories and futures were being struck cleanly from time and space as it slithered along, silent, save for the soft little hiss of death's scythe swinging through the air. It was feasting, and it was enjoying each decreasing decibel of the foul cacophony of this world. Soon, it would eat its fill, and it would be peaceful and silent and beautiful.

The people of this world and their nasty little companion creatures screamed and howled and cried in terror as its tendrils grasped as them, covered them, shredded them away--neatly paring them out of reality, exactly as if they had never been there at all.

Away went their ugly, horrified faces.

Away went their soft, slimy skin.

Away went their pulpy, red flesh.

Away went their brittle bones.

And then, away they went.

There was silence.

There was_ peace_.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"There," Mr Fairchild said, pointing one long finger.

A small house in the suburbs flickered like a mirage in front of them; a black substance coated it, wrapped itself around, engulfed it completely. It was being chewed up and digested by the no-thing. No-things liked to eat existences, and this one looked like it was in the middle of a grand buffet. A large part of the Westside of Los Angeles had vanished in its wake, left as a meandering, smoking strip of nothing. The no-thing was growing fat right before his crimson eyes, which delighted him--all those people runnin' around and freaking the fuck out. The emergency services were doing all they could to contain what was basically a city-wide riot, but they weren't having a very good time of it. The screams--the anguish of being deleted from everything--made for rather a pretty symphony. Music to his ears. He smiled.

"On the left there, Mr Fairchild?" Sigma asked. The building in question distorted and warped as if in reply.

"Yup," her master replied. "'Port over there. It's time for target practice."

"Yes, sir!" she responded enthusiastically. She had sometimes practiced while he was Out; she hoped that he would be proud of her for improving and for taking initiative. Sigma concentrated hard and teleported to just outside of the building, which was swiftly fading like a memory, or a dream upon waking. It might have never been there; in its place was a yawning, cavernous void full of no-thing--a slick, viscous black shadow, slipping around to the next building--a sporting-goods store--like an overgrown eel. She found herself disturbed by this. What if it ate _her_? If it had come last week, she would have welcomed it--it would have been better for everyone involved. Her parents, her Just-Friends, and the world in general would have been a fairer place. But now, Mr Fairchild… she was his _chosen_. What happened if a Chosen One failed? Movies and TV shows never really showed it, because Chosen Ones always won in fantasies and daydreams. She wondered. What would happen if she were swallowed up by that chasm of silence? Would she be dead, or would she stop existing in the first place? And Mr Fairchild! What would he do without her? Would he give up on his dreams and goals? Would he _replace_ her? The thought of being replaced so easily gave her a shiver. She didn't want to wind up like that--expendable, easily forgettable. She was already easily forgettable; most people, upon meeting her, forgot her name and her face and went on with their lives. She wanted to be remembered--remembered by her master--wanted to serve him. He was just too kind to her.

_That's it, then_, she thought, a look of determination settling upon her face; _I have to win, for the sake of Mr Fairchild_! A smirk spread across the man's own handsome face, flashing too-pointy teeth, which glistened in the pale morning sunlight for just a moment.

"Make me proud, Sigma. Do whatever it takes." She blushed brightly as the man brushed a hand--cold and pale--across her cheek. His lips brushed her forehead. "That'll be your good-luck charm."

"Oh--thank you!" she said, her voice high and squeaky. His grin spread as she saluted playfully and trotted up towards the building. Silly little bitch. But an awfully good sport. She was playing along magnificently, the way that good pawns do. The no-thing, though having no knowledge of rules or of his will, was playing along just fine, too. He had summoned it from the outer reaches, finding that she needed some more difficult training exercises; oh, he'd seen that she was trying out her magic on some things around the mansion's weed-choked gardens, like old, burned-out oak trees. But he needed to give her a _challenge_. So he had pulled some quantum strings, as it were, and gotten this no-thing to come along, to face reality for awhile. That was always enough to get a no-thing to go fuckin' insane (not that it had much sanity to speak of in the first place)--too much light, too much heat, too much noise, too much _life_--and start destroying everything in sight, and in some cases, some things that could only be felt--it swallowed up memories, thoughts, emotions, dreams, histories, futures, time. He didn't honestly care whether she won or lost against the beast. He just liked to listen to a world tearing apart and screaming in its agonized death throes, liked to watch people in pain and in panic. If she lost, he would praise her with sincere-sounding words of affection. It had been working very well so far; she was eating out of the palm of his hands, bowing at his feet, simply because he was playing the concerned big-brother figure, acting kindly toward her. Associate good behavior with positive outcomes, and you soon enough had people who would destroy universes for you if you but asked. You had loyalty. You didn't get loyal servants and effective pawns if you treated them badly. That was where the other lot had gone bad--Metallia and Pharaoh 90 and all their torturous ilk. Didn't know how to create loyalties, didn't know how to manipulate their underlings properly. For all the power they had had, they were really fuckin' stupid, and he had brought this up in conversation before. They had dismissed him, despite his knowledge and the fact that he was older than any of them. And what had become of them? They were sealed away or dead or disappeared now, conquered by a load of silly little Japanese girls in frilly miniskirts.

And if she lost, he would shrug, sit back, and watch the universe as it was reduced to dust and void.

He didn't care about the outcome, just for the fun of the game.

Sigma carefully pushed off of the ground, getting herself airborne. Good start, he noted. She hovered over it for a moment, watching as it slithered into another place, making a loud squelching noise. It leapt across to a tour bus, and it was slowly vanishing as it rattled along down Fairfax Avenue, peeling away layer by layer--being stripped of its actuality bit by bit. She whipped around and held up a hand. Concentrate. Focus. Think. Concentrate… The power bubbled inside of her, rising into her hands. Violet-colored energy crackled, like lightning, and she launched it at the no-thing devouring the bus.

"_Flash Lancer_!" she called as she did so. She still felt a bit silly calling out her attacks like this, but Mr Fairchild had said it was a wise thing to do--naming a thing acknowledged it, gave it power. And with that power, one could perform miracles.

The bus flickered, in a twilight between being and un-being, and distracted, the no-thing rose, poised something like a cobra. It glimmered darkly before her, and she swallowed a bit nervously. No. No time to be nervous or afraid. Remember Mr Fairchild. _Master_, she thought. At first, it had unnerved her to think of him connected with such a term, but it had worn a comfortable groove in her mind; it was what he was, an undeniable fact. The no-thing gave a hoarse scream as it shot past her, numerous sets of needle-like teeth snapping, narrowly avoiding Sigma, but it circled back around to try again. The woman frowned. Not today. She wouldn't lose today. She had to impress her master, had to do as he said, and he had told her to win, to defeat the thing. And no matter what the cost, she would do what he said, just to see that smile, to get the gentle, kind words from his lips…

"_Razor Sniper_!" she shouted. A blade of energy flared into existence, looking much like an axe-blade, and she willed it away from her, flinging it at a high speed into the shimmering black mass of nothingness that quickly dove at her. The violet, sharp energy cut through it, eliciting another hoarse scream from the thing. _The sounds of silence_, she thought wildly. It didn't seem to be responding to the energy attacks. Time for a physical attack… but what to do? She dodged as it snapped its mouths at her again, looking around quickly. Claws! Just like _it_ had. That was an idea. She closed her eyes tightly. "_Transform_!" she screamed. Beneath her white gloves, her skin pulsed and twitched and writhed. The thin fabric of her gloves burst open, and her skin--originally pale and creamy and beautiful--peeled away, falling to the ground with a sickening 'plop!' to reveal a new scaly, rippling black hide. Her fingernails--once painted a pretty sunset-red--lengthened into long, knife-like claws. Sigma screamed with the terrific pain of transforming her hands into these monstrosities; it coursed through her every nerve, tore at them, but that was no matter. There was her master to think of. She had to win. Had to keep fighting, even through terror, even through pain. For him. All for him. Once her claws were solidified, she soared higher into the air and flipped around, so that she dropped down towards the no-thing headfirst, claws open and ready to rend its un-being into shreds.

Down below, Mr Fairchild leaned against a car, hands in his pockets. He was watching her closely, humming an old song to himself. She was doing decently. Thinking on her feet. That was always a valuable skill, as long as it didn't go too far--he knew how to keep it from going too far, fortunately. Knew how to keep her on her leash. Of course. That was why she had given herself new skin--simply in order to impress him. It was easy to manipulate lonely, sad people like that. Show them a bit of affection, no matter how patently false it was, and they would kill themselves and take half the world with them gladly.

Behind Mr Fairchild, an extremely battered Buick pulled up. As it was, what remained of the car was largely just a wirework frame, a steering column, and the engine, which was starting to vanish with the last of the vehicle. Officer Moffat climbed out of the car, and his door fell on the pavement with a clang as he did. He ignored it completely. Morgan smiled brightly and simply stepped out of her side--her door was already gone. Ah! The monster… black, slimy, the size of a small skyscraper. It was covered in ugly, rheumy eyes and pointy teeth. Everything it dripped slime onto vanished slowly, peeling away layer by layer. She swallowed, shaking slightly. The other sailor-girl (Miss Sigma?) was flying around fighting it tooth and claw. She felt slightly jealous that Miss Sigma was brave enough to fly--Morgan certainly wasn't that brave, in any capacity. Still… she would have to, wouldn't she? She would have to force some bravery into herself. Go, fight, win. But it would be an Adventure, too! That was cheering…

"Make with the magic, girly," Officer Moffat demanded. "Be careful not to destroy any city property," he added after a moment's thought. She nodded vigorously and fumbled the little crystal orb from her pocket, holding it out in front of her. _Say the magic words_, it demanded of her, and she was only too happy to do so.

"Epsilon Power, Make Up!" she cried. There was the warm, star-bright flash of light, and she became Sailor Epsilon once more. She smiled enthusiastically; the microgun, peculiarly for its size, was light against her hip, easily swung through the air as she held it up, aiming...

The creature was enormous, taking up the entire street between two buildings--its own size ever increasing. She wondered where she should aim at, where its weak point might have been--and of course, she had to be careful not to strike Miss Sigma. She squinted. Proper _heroes_, she reflected, should also not be _nearsighted_, especially if the monster in question was such an amorphous shadow in a concrete field strewn with the shadows of skyscrapers and billboards. Granted, it was thicker, darker than most shadows, but nevertheless, it was a little bit hard to see and thus aim properly; it kept moving, churning around wildly. Epsilon considered it another mark against true heroine-hood. But… better to try anyway, she supposed. At the back of her mind, a tiny voice expressed its desire to run away and hide. She didn't like the look of the monster. Her legs twitched, and involuntarily, she took a step back. Moffat gently pushed her forward, one hand against the small of her back. It wasn't a forceful, angry push, not at all--it was instead a gentle nudge of encouragement. Epsilon's face turned a little pink. He was right, of course. She couldn't run away. She had to go and fight.

Mr Fairchild stood up straight and turned a bit, regarding the new players with mild interest. He watched as the police officer pushed Sailor Epsilon forward into battle. She hugged the barrel of her gun tightly for a moment, then let it fall and rest against her hip; after a moment, she fired the gun, hundreds of rounds of sharp, shining bullets striking the black mass of the creature. It only clipped the no-thing by its edge (as far as it could have been considered to have any edges, anyway). She was untrained, apparently. Someone who hadn't learned the power of naming one's magic, and thus gaining control over it. Unnamed magic tended to control its user. And he had no problem with that, really. It served his purposes well; he wasn't about to tell her.

He didn't approach the other two; he just stood with his shoulder against the back of a van, watching the policeman and the gunner Sailor Soldier. He would just sit back and watch it all play out. He considered it for a moment, and then realized what kind of gun she was using--it was like a Vulcan cannon--a fighter jet's Gatling--shrunk down to miniature, human-use size. Inelegant, messy, hard to control. Fairchild had a chuckle about that. Like a suicide mission, it was, carrying around a gun like that--especially in the hands of an inexperienced little pudge like Sailor Epsilon.

Sailor Sigma looked down as the next volley of shining bullets rushed past her, tearing into the creature, and frowned. The other sailor was there, standing in the middle of the street, armed with an enormous gun; behind her was a policeman with his handgun drawn. He was firing it fruitlessly at the creature; while Sailor Epsilon's bullets seemed to be dealing burning damage to the hungry shadow, the man's bullets didn't seem to be doing much of anything. She regarded her rival with disgust for just a moment--but then decided to ignore the other girl and continue clawing and tearing at the no-thing. No, she wouldn't let the other sailor win. Wouldn't. Couldn't. Never.

Mr Fairchild would be impressed with this method of attack. Not only was she improving upon attack power and physical fighting with her lovely new claws, she was improving upon speed and agility while flying, and Mr Fairchild would be proud of her. She would deliver the final blow to the beast. And her master would smile at her. She liked seeing him smile; it was a smile that seemed to be reserved for her, a soft and mysterious, but affectionate, kind of cat's-grin.

Down on the ground, Sailor Epsilon gripped her gun tightly. It fired endless round after round of ammunition into the shadow-beast, the shining projectiles eating away at the dark mass. It was shrinking, growing smaller under the might and fury of the attack.

But as the beast shrank… she saw a bus squeezed underneath its great gelatinous body. For a moment, Epsilon stopped firing, surprised. She could see people inside of it, scratching themselves bloody at the windows and screaming silently behind them. She looked at Moffat for some sort of guidance, but he was equally as startled. He scratched the back of his hair, trying to think of something. At a loss, he shook his head.

"J… just keep shooting, girly. Get it gone, and then we'll save the people in the bus," he said. There was nothing else to do.

"Yes, sir, Officer," she said meekly. Her hand shook as she started firing the Gatling again, melting away more of the shadow. Yes. They would destroy that mass together--Epsilon and Officer Moffat and even Miss Sigma--and they would rescue the entrapped people. There would be a happy ending to a glorious Adventure.

Far above her, Sigma frowned, her upper lip curling into a most unbecoming snarl. She spread her claws again and swept down towards the shadow--but with a final burst of bright gunfire, so close that she felt the wind created by the passing ammunition--the shadow-beast was obliterated. It gave one last, ugly howl of anger before it vanished entirely. Sigma squealed, part terrified and part upset, and then it just turned to a blind, red anger. That wasn't _fair_! How rude--coming in and just randomly killing off other people's quarry! She grabbed out at the air, feeling and searching, perhaps, for another piece of it that she could have destroyed, but instead of touching the no-thing, she found nothing. She whimpered as she floated gently back to the ground. Her master would be _disappointed_. There was no worse thing in the world than having people be _disappointed_ in you, particularly people that you liked and really wanted to impress. They would shake their heads sadly, and sometimes, they would say nothing. It was ten times _worse_ when they didn't say anything. And she got the feeling that Mr Fairchild was the sort of person who would just sigh quietly, shake his head sadly, and not say a damn word. Her feet touched the pavement, and she shuffled back to the man, head hanging down.

"Sigma," he said tonelessly, patting her on the shoulder. He didn't say anything else, nor did he shake his head and sigh; she found this even more unnerving. She shot a nasty glare at Epsilon from where she stood; if looks could kill, the gunner Senshi would have keeled over right then and there.

------------------------------------------------

Instead, though, a small smile crossed Sailor Epsilon's face as leaned on the barrel of the gun. The expression on her face was satisfied look of someone who had accomplished an enormously difficult task, the same sort of look that theatre performers get on opening night, when all of the rehearsing and hard work has finally paid off in a standing ovation.

Of course, nobody clapped for Sailor Epsilon, nor for Sailor Sigma. The streets were deserted, save for the four of them; everyone had scattered away to hide like rats, to be safe.

"Um. That was neat," she said with a smile.

"Yeah, yeah. Swell," Moffat agreed, sounding irritated. "No property damage or anything. But I gotta ask--what are we gonna do about that half-disappeared bus and its passengers?" She looked back over her shoulder at the bus, which was still flickering in and out of existence. People inside pounded uselessly at the doors and scratched at the windows, horror written plainly across their faces. Each person phased in and out, blinking like fireflies. In and out of existence. Here one second, gone the next.

She opened her mouth to say something, then shut it again, and shivered. She hadn't thought about that, having figured that destroying a monster was like hitting the reset button--that killing it would just bring everybody and everything it destroyed back. Instead, there was an house full of people missing (she supposed that was what had been there, just judging by the other places around it--she had been up that road a couple times, and couldn't really remember the opulent house, nor the pool that had once sparkled in the summer sunlight, nor the magnificent, lush palm trees that had surrounded the first floor all the way around--it just simply _hadn't_ existed anymore), deleted from the universe, and there was a bus that was midway, warped between being there and being nowhere. Schrödinger's cat-bus.

Sailor Epsilon leaned against the hood of Officer Moffat's car and thought, hard, trying to come up with a swift solution. What to do about something that only sort-of existed? How could you _fix_ that? It would have been different from healing a wound, say; she knew how human bodies worked, and had an inkling of how she could have concocted a spell to knit bone and flesh back together. But she had never taken a physics course in school, having filled that slot up with an earth-science course instead. She had no idea how physics worked, and even if she did, she had a dark and awful suspicion that she wouldn't have been able to figure out a problem like this anyway. Fretfully, she chewed on her index-fingernail, trying to squeeze a coherent thought together amongst the panicked rubble of her mind.

Behind her, Officer Moffat took a packet of cigarettes out and popped one in the corner of his mouth, lighting it and frowning. He was still on duty, but at the moment, he hardly cared. There was the problem of the disappearing bus to be solved still. If it _could_ be solved. He looked at the people on the bus, then quickly looked back down, running his fingers through his mussed hair.

They had started off looking terrified, wildly clawing at the windows, silently screaming for help, trying to find a way out… but they were melting away, their faces sliding into a blank state with each rapid, passing blink-out. Each successive waver seemed to peel them away layer by layer. Inch by inch… first, their skin stripped away slowly, melting like tallow--to where, Epsilon thankfully did not know. She stared, her thoughts slowing down. She couldn't tear her eyes away from it, while Moffat was sensibly staring at his shoes and the pavement, grinding his teeth so hard that his jaw hurt. Skin gone, the passengers on the bus stared blankly, with no eyelids to cover their roaming eyeballs, nothing but stringy muscle to create ghastly, gaping red expressions, large white teeth clamping uselessly together, still silently crying out for help.

But soon, the muscle had melted away as well, leaving a transport full of bloody-bones, still staggering about.

She squeezed her hands into fists, her nails digging in, even through the gloves that she wore; after a couple moments of this, she felt blood starting to seep through them, just a tiny trickle staining the white gloves. She wished she could come up with a magical spell to save them. Something… Her voice quavered as she spoke; she did so chiefly to bring herself back to reality, to try and ground herself, but it didn't work that well.

"_Safety Net_," she said, waving a hand in a throwing motion towards the disappearing bus. A large, thick-roped net materialized out of thin air, flying towards the bus, following the arc of the motion she had made--but it phased through it uselessly, flopping onto an abandoned snow cone cart several feet beyond it.

After seeing this, she tried to think of something else, tried hard. If she could only rewind time… The little light bulb went off in her mind, and she tried to think of some way to do this. Magic… one could do just about anything with magic, couldn't they? Reject it, so that it never happened, so that the bus would reappear and toddle off on its way to Santa Monica, or wherever the hell it was supposed to be going.

"Rewind… reverse… reject… please," she pleaded with the magic, to no avail.

Nothing happened.

Inside the bus, layers of nerve and brain tissue started to evaporate away, and slowly, the people inside stopped moving at last. Just bones now, and now, not even that… The bus itself started to vanish in a soft haze, dissipating like dreams.

"M-Mr Moffat, what should we do?!" she asked, turning to the policeman, who had been crushing the same cigarette into the ground with the toe of his shoe for about three minutes now--anything to avoid looking at the vanishing point.

"I don't know," he said softly. She frowned, wracking her brain, trying to think of anything else she could do, although she knew it was too late to do anything now. Killed the monster with a lucky shot, but was unable to save the bus full of innocent people. _Three cheers for Morgan_, she thought darkly, _hero of the hour_. She couldn't think of a goddamn thing. Her mind had faded away, just the same as the people she'd failed to save just now, peeling away layer by layer.

The policeman put a hand on her shoulder gently and gave it a squeeze, unsure of anything else to do. Shit, what _could_ he say? What _could_ he do? They didn't train you for shit like that in the police academy. Sometimes detectives would have the unfortunate task of telling people that valued family members had been murdered, but he'd never had to do that; he wasn't a detective, he'd always been content to be a simple beat officer. And even though those people (_what people?_) had been strangers, it was worse, watching them be peeled away bit by bit right before their eyes, and with no way to get them back. Sailor Epsilon continued staring blankly at the vanishing point, an expression of horror frozen on her cute, round face, and Officer Moffat squeezed her shoulder again, then awkwardly gave her a hug.

"Girly," he said gently. Behind her glasses, her eyes were glazed, and her expression blank. Some hero she turned out to be. Second day on the job--won the battle, lost the people that were supposed to be saved. The latter was what was more important--lives. Weren't _heroes_ supposed to be able to do both things? She hadn't even really wanted to be a hero, so much as she'd wanted to be an Intrepid Girl Adventurer, and this adventure had taken a very poor turn at the end. "Come on, girly."

"They disappeared," she croaked, looking at the policeman blearily.

"This may sound harsh, or mean, but speakin' as a cop, I have to tell you--there'll be times when you just can't save 'em all. You can catch the murderer, but you won't be able to wind back time so that the murder never happened. But you can at least take comfort in that you've probably saved a bunch of other people." He was trying to sound comforting, but he wasn't sure how well it was working. That sort of talk never made _him_ feel any better, honestly--he always felt pangs of guilt when he couldn't save somebody, when something went wrong, as it often did in his line of work. But perhaps she was different. The policeman awkwardly put an arm around her shoulder and led her up onto the sidewalk; she didn't say anything at all, although she seemed to have heard him okay. She had only nodded slightly. He tried to think of something else to say. "There's always tomorrow," he said lamely, patting her on the shoulder. He'd never been good at pep-talks or with cheering people up.

"Tomorrow…" she echoed dully, blinking a bit.

"Yup," he agreed.

"Tomorrow," she repeated. She turned the word over in her head several times. Always tomorrow... Always another day. Tomorrow's another day... Tomorrow never knows… The word was promising, and cruelly soothing.

"The sun'll come up tomorrow morning and the world will keep gliding on," he added matter-of-factly. "_We_ still exist, people like me and you, so we can still go fight another day. And maybe then, we'll win, and we'll get to save everybody. Maybe we won't. But…"

"There'll be tomorrow," Epsilon said in a small voice.

"Yup." He patted her shoulder again, and she blinked. After another couple of minutes, she hugged her gun's barrel tightly, as if it were some soothing childhood toy, and smiled weakly and distantly. At least it was a smile of some kind, though not exactly the strongest, brightest, or the most reassuring; it was better than the glazed, utterly blank expression she'd worn for the past ten minutes.

"Yes. Tomorrow," she said, as if agreeing to some unheard question. The word brought her some small amount of calm and comfort. "I'll fight for tomorrow."

"There's a girl," Officer Moffat said approvingly, rubbing her back gently, in what he hoped was a comforting way.

She flashed another weak smile at him.

Tomorrow sounded good.


	4. Tomorrow's Dream

_**Tomorrow's Dream**_

Officer Moffat had kindly agreed to take her home, after she had transformed back into regular old Morgan. She was somewhat glad that, for now, she wasn't Sailor Epsilon. Not after this morning's adventure.

Considering.

Wondering.

Mostly, considering and wondering if she _should_ be Sailor Epsilon. She'd made a piss-poor hero.

She hadn't said more than seven words the entire ride home--she'd said, "thank you for the ride, Mr Moffat," like a good, polite girl should, when he'd pulled up outside of the ugly rat-hole building that served as her living quarters. It wasn't much, but it was home, she supposed. It was what she could afford, and it was more than a lot of people had. She didn't like it at all, but she was grateful for it anyway.

"Swank place," he'd commented with a snort, but she hadn't said anything in response. Just smiled faintly, distantly, waved goodbye, and walked inside.

She had immediately locked the door, then gone into the bathroom and taken a too-long hot shower, listening to the special shower-radio stuck on the fiberglass wall. The House of Hair radio show had been on, spotlighting some quasi-obscure metal band called Savatage. It was nice, although, of course, it couldn't quite wipe her mind of the amazing disappearing metro bus and the people that were pared neatly out of the world--their bloody, horrified faces, their silent screams. One word, though, would not leave, and that word was 'tomorrow.' The policeman had said that the world would keep on gliding in its place, but right now, she felt as if she were floating in space above the world--a dimly-blinking star.

Failed. Failed at being a hero. She hadn't wanted to be a _hero_, really. The thought hadn't crossed her mind at all when she had first touched the little crystal orb--that first night that she'd transformed into Sailor Epsilon, and now--just now--she felt horribly guilty for it. Ashamed. Her thoughts had been selfish; thoughts of having an interesting story to tell, of Adventures--not of protecting people with her powers, not at all. And she had paid for that mistake, for her selfishness--she and a couple of dozen people. The difference was that she was still there, and those poor people were nowhere now.

She had been the good, responsible girl all her life. Compulsively nice, although she honestly didn't like it a lot of the time. Good girls simply weren't interesting to anybody, except the authority figures at school, who could always use compulsive rule-followers as valuable spies on the playground and in the cafeteria--she'd been rather a teacher's pet. Being _nice_ was her thing. Children evolve their own survival techniques; some become smart and earn awards for great science projects or good math grades. Some become athletes and impress others with speed or strength. Some become bullies and survive through the fears of others. Some are simply gifted with beauty or fascinating quirks and have friends constantly flocking to them. Morgan wasn't any of those things. She wasn't exceedingly smart--though she'd gotten decent grades in school; she wasn't athletic, often finding herself out of breath after riding her bicycle up the hills in the city; she wasn't beautiful, or quirky, or creative. She was just… _nice_. And honest. And hard-working. A good girl.

She'd just wanted to leave that behind for a little while.

It was dead dull. As a teenager, not so very long ago, she would do yard work at the Methodist church every Saturday, while all of her schoolmates had been busy sneaking their first beers or running to home in the backseat of their cars. She would complete all of her book reports and science fair projects on time, while her peers would skive off of it and go to the zoo in Columbus or the mall or out to a ditch-day party. She would show up for work early and work extra, to get ahead of things (she was afraid to think of what would happen when she went to work tomorrow) so that her employers wouldn't yell at her or think poorly of her. Always the industrious worker. She would always Do The Right Thing, always do exactly what was expected of her, and she never had any interesting stories to tell for it. It was always the same old song and dance. Get up, go to work, come home, pay the bills, go to bed. Routine. Responsibility. It was like being chained to a merry-go-round. Around and around and around, the same path every day, with very little variation. There was no excitement in her life. Never had been. She hated it; Morgan had tried to change, to be a wild girl, but found herself utterly unable to do so. It would have been like the tiger who wanted spots--against her very nature.

She had just wanted to use all that power to create an interesting story of her own.

It had finally been her _chance_.

And today, people had vanished entirely, lost to the ages, because of her foolishness. She'd blown that _chance_ she had. Dust in an instant. Perhaps it _was_ her fault and perhaps it _wasn't_, but Morgan felt responsible for it either way. The one time she'd decided to go try to be selfish and wild, to have adventures, and that was the way that that had ended up. Things peeling right out of reality. A bus full of bloody-bones, that rested uneasily in vague memory now. They had been people on their way to different places. Strangers. They had each started their day in a different house, eaten different breakfasts--maybe the old man clawing at the very back window had eaten bacon and poached eggs, and the young, pretty mother beside him, uselessly tugging at the brake signal line, had eaten a healthy whole-grain cereal with yogurt right next to her children--and then just hopped on the same bus to go to different places--school, or work, or to watch _The Price is Right _being taped at the CBS studios, for all she knew. And then they had been neatly cut away from existence before her eyes, and there had been nothing at all that she could do, no matter how much she tried. It would have been better if she had thought to save the bus first before killing the monster… if she had even _seen_ the bus. By the time she had seen it, it had been too late, wasn't it? The thought failed to comfort her. That was just an excuse, wasn't it? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. Either way, it was the _truth_, but the truth can be just as ugly as a bald-faced lie--if not worse.

It had been a rotten today. Rotten all over.

Tomorrow.

Maybe there would be a chance to be better tomorrow. Soldier on away from yesterday. Yes, that sounded good. Make up for today's abject failure. A chance to be good again. Try to be less selfish.

Morgan pulled the microfleece blanket around herself, appreciating its warmth. Officer Moffat had kindly offered to come keep her company, but she'd declined; it had been awkward enough to come back to one's senses being hugged by a strange man in the middle of the sidewalk. It had been warm and grounding, but still horribly awkward. Now, instead, she sat in the middle of the floor, atop a slightly deflated green air mattress, dressed in fluffy cow-jumping-over-the-moon-print flannel pajamas, thinking hard. Her mind had meandered lazily through a multitude of flashing images and soft sounds, memories and visions, wild feelings--raging from irritated to sad to shamefully grateful--and it had finally arrived at this.

Tomorrow, then.

It was something terribly vague to fight for, and it wasn't really noble or inspiring or heroic, like fighting for love and justice was, but it occurred to her that she didn't have a firm grasp on either of those things. She understood love in _theory_, but had never had a lover of her own, and Mr Moffat was the closest thing she could honestly call a 'friend,' even if she'd only met him all of twice. And as for justice--wasn't that the job of the police? Probably Mr Moffat would come and slap the cuffs on her for interfering with a criminal investigation or something if she tried it. He seemed like that kind of guy, just judging by the warning he'd given her the first night and by the way he'd sort of demanded that she come along with him to combat the vanisher-thing, although she had gone along willingly anyway. She wasn't sure how she felt about handcuffs, so it was probably better to avoid them for now.

She didn't have a great love to fight for, nor friends to protect. Nor did she have some great, solid concept of justice to strive for. There was justice in the world, she felt, but she was quite certain that she wasn't a tool for exacting it. She didn't have a high and noble mission from God or any other spook or spirit, though she wished she did right now.

What else did she really have?

Tomorrow.

Only tomorrow.

The hope that things would be better tomorrow.

Morgan pulled the blanket tighter and curled up on her inflatable mattress tightly, taking off her glasses and closing her eyes. Yes. She would wake up and try to be a better person in the morning--make up for her mistakes and foolishness in the future. Because there was a future, wasn't there? You could always keep moving on. There was a light at the end of the tunnel. That was the thing about deep, dark tunnels. They eventually ended, and you were out into the sunshine again. Wasn't that right?

With her thoughts turned to stars and light, she found herself comforted; she eventually fell asleep, clutching her pillow tightly for consolation.

When she dreamed, she dreamed of space--broad and dark, distantly flecked with tiny, random spots of silver and gold forming indecipherable pictures and writing legends in the dark skies. It was an eternity away from her home world--away from things she knew and loved. Sherlock Holmes stories and Gordon Ramsay shows and Janis Joplin records and garlic bread and rocking chairs and beachside picnics and Mr Moffat and… it was lonely out here. Empty. There was no sun, no stars, just space, as far as the eye could see, and just her, floating around in the ether, bobbing weightlessly in the strange gravities of an alien place. But it was warm, and the warmth was coming from a tiny star… it bubbled power from within, spawning a glittering globe of golden light around her. In her dream, she curled up, rocking back and forth in her orbital path, humming the tune to some unknown, forgotten song; upon waking, she would not be able to remember the tune or the lyrics. Sometimes, the thought would stick in her mind and bother her as she strained to recall it.

She dreamed of light; she dreamed of gold; she dreamed of strange, unearthly music; she dreamed of sound; she dreamed of black heavens; she dreamed of life.

She dreamed tomorrow.

--------------------------------------------------------

Ian Moffat knew that it was damn girly, but he liked it, anyway. Hot bubble baths. Just the thing for hard days. Today had been an exceedingly hard day. He had slowly eased himself into one and was currently soaking and smoking a cigarette--the third so far--with his large, bare feet propped up on the edges of the bathtub, staring up at the ceiling. Strictly speaking, he wasn't supposed to be smoking in his apartment, but today, _just_ for today, he was willing to break the rules and have himself a smoke while he soaked. Several, in fact. It was that kind of a day, the kind of day that, about ten years from now, he would be able to pinpoint as the exact day that the cancer started spawning in his lungs, because he'd sucked down so many cigarettes all in a matter of hours.

Of course he knew it was hideously unhealthy.

But on the other hand, it was what relaxed him. Police work was already a pretty stressful job, and it seemed like it would be all the worse if he kept up with Morgan and all these monsters and ghosts and shit. He was going to go through a lot of bubble bath and a lot of cigarettes this way.

A sensible person might have pointed out that, at any time, he could have just left Sailor Epsilon on her own--that he had no responsibility for her. But they would have been wrong. He _did_ feel a sense of responsibility. There was his duty as a policeman--by trade and by nature--to protect and serve his city, and that extended from ticketing speeders and California-stoppers, all the way to trying to fend off worms that ate worlds. Protect and serve.

Then there was a duty he felt toward Morgan. Sure, she was largely a stranger to him, but she was part of the citizenry of Los Angeles. Even heroes needed protecting; maybe not so much physical protection as moral support and encouragement. Emotional rescue. He hummed a snatch of the tune to himself. After defeating that shadow-worm-thing, after being unable to save that bus full of people, she had looked like she was skating on the edge of fuckin' losing it completely. What if she did? If she did go fuckin' batshit, what would happen? He didn't know the half of what the sailor-girls could do with their powers. There wouldn't be much of a chance of defending a supergirl gone mad. Not from the human side of things, anyway. So he had that responsibility to support her. That was how he saw it all.

He inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. The bubbles floating atop the steaming-hot water were some fancy moisturizing blend that smelled of French vanilla; he'd bought it at an upscale lotion shop a couple of months ago, and he quite liked it. The smell was sweet, musky, intoxicating. Good for clearing one's sinuses and good for clearing one's mind of daily stresses.

He ashed his cigarette into the little blue ashtray that he had placed in the soapdish. Of course, one couldn't have the ashes dropping into the vanilla bubble bath. That would be nasty.

Fuckin' horrifying end to a fuckin' weird day. People peeling away into nothing. Disgusting. What he'd said to Morgan was true, though; there _were_ times when you couldn't really save everyone, no matter how hard you worked to do so, and it wasn't anything that could be helped. It ate at him inside a bit, truthfully, but you learned to live with it, and just did the best you could. No faultin' anybody for that. He had really been at a loss to say anything comforting, and had just trotted out the old "you can't save everyone" gem. At least, towards the end, Morgan seemed to have understood. A little bit, anyway. She had seemed a nice enough girl at first blush; didn't talk much, but smiled a lot.

Ian wondered what kind of critter could peel stuff away like that--what purpose it could possibly serve. He was used to dealing with human criminals, who, most of the time, committed crime with some sort of purpose. Crime of any sort tended to disgust him, but at least he understood that a lot of it had some purpose, even if it was an impulse thing. Stealing a car to go joyriding, for instance. Obviously, the car-thief did not have one, and wanted to go somewhere in an awful hurry, and thus jacked someone's Caddy and took it screaming across the city. He understood it in concept, though he would never really understand why people would put it into practice. Ian was an uncomplicated man, tried his best to just be an honest fella and to do his job. That was life, not much one could do about it but keep moving forward. He'd accepted it long ago, and felt that his life was all the richer for it. But most people seemed to have a fuckton of trouble moving forward with it. He understood that, too. It was perfectly understandable.

He crushed out the last of that cigarette and settled back into the bubbles a little more, deeply inhaling the scent of vanilla. He hoped that Morgan was dealing all right. She hadn't said anything when he'd dropped her off, having declined his offer to keep her company if she needed it, though she'd accepted a slip of paper with his cellphone number just in case. She was no better than a stranger, but he felt badly. Not that any of it had really been his fault. Hey, he hadn't summoned the damn thing. Maybe she had just needed someone to talk to, he thought. But she had simply waved him away and walked upstairs with a tense expression on her face. Poor girl.

Ian yawned a bit. If he wasn't careful, he'd pass out in the tub, and _that_ wouldn't be a pretty thing at all. Hard days just took it out of him. Such days came in various degrees, of course. He pulled his feet back into the tub to soak them, his knees rising above the foam of the bubbles. Sometimes, it was a dizzying onslaught of fairly easy things, and it was largely the speed that was troubling. Sometimes, it was only a few really hard things, and it was more a matter of quality over quantity. But you just had to roll with it. There was precisely jack shit you could do about it, and the sooner you accepted that, the better off you were.

That was just how Ian was raised, really--by a couple of practical-minded, no-nonsense northeastern folks. He'd taken it to heart from an early age. The other children hated him for it when he was in school. He had been a studious little kid, and even then, an obsessive rule-follower and strict rule-enforcer. Fortune had smiled upon him and made him a big enough guy to look pretty fuckin' imposing, so he didn't get beat up in the parking lot after classes every afternoon, like he probably would have otherwise. Ian wound up at six-foot-seven and powerful, built well and full of lean muscle. He'd started off in the safety patrol in fourth grade and wound up a policeman. A lifetime ambition; the only mystic bullshit he'd ever seriously considered before now--his destiny. He felt as though it was his _destiny_ to be a policeman, somehow--the lot that he drew, and he took that all very seriously. Duty. Protect and serve.

His thoughts wandered over to the other sailor-girly as he took another cigarette--last one--out of the battered little packet. The one with the purple ribbon on her chest, who had been fighting the… the… _thing_, whatever it was, in midair when they'd arrived on the scene. Morgan--Epsilon--whatever you wanted to call her--had gotten off a lucky volley of shots that chewed it up, and Sigma had looked awful pissed after that. Ian had caught a glimpse of her boss, too--the inexplicably creepy bastard--and he'd looked none too pleased with Sigma. He wondered what they were up to, and worried a bit for Sigma's safety--though he wasn't certain as to why.

Ian had asked Morgan if she knew the other two, but the girl had shaken her head 'no' in response. Whatever it was, he didn't trust 'em, not even as far as he could spit.

------------------------------------------------------------

There was a house on a high hill, overlooking the city and the ocean beyond. It had once been a beautiful mansion. Once. It was bordering decrepit now. Where once the Golden Age elite had waltzed across the cobalt-tiled floor, only dust danced now. Sometimes, a cockroach or a rat would crawl out to forage, and, upon finding nothing, scuttle back out to the weed-choked gardens to try their luck there instead--if its tiny heart didn't stop in its tracks and jolt it to a permanent stop on the way. There was something _about_ this place. The elegantly-tiled roof was now crumbling in a couple of places, and ghosts--or perhaps more--whispered from every corner. It was a sad place, a dark place, and two people made their home here amidst the gloom; it was their little black castle, and Sigma had actually liked it. There was some kind of funny quality about it that reminded her of old stories--Castle Dracula, or some eldritch temple from out of Innsmouth. Silly, of course.

Mr Fairchild had not said a word since they had come back home, but his expression spoke volumes. His handsome face was pulled into an ugly, sour look, the sort of look one gets when confronted with copious amounts of shit on the bottom of one's finest Sunday shoes. His eyes _burned_; Sigma was determinedly trying to avoid looking at them, but found she couldn't quite turn her own eyes from his. This time, she was almost _certain_ that she saw red smoldering behind the deep brown... She found a tiny, quivering voice, and spoke at last, wanting to break the stagnate silence.

"I--it w-wasn't my fault," she said softly.

His upper lip curled. Finally, he spoke, and it made her blood run cold.

"You disappoint me, Laurie," he said simply. It was the first time in days that he used her actual, proper name. She looked down at the ground, and he didn't slip his finger underneath her chin and tilt her head upward, as he would do sometimes if she looked down for too long, and he would smile at her. Now, though, he didn't touch her, and certainly didn't smile at her.

"I'm sorry," she said. Deep down, she didn't know what she was apologizing for, but it felt necessary. It wasn't _her_ fault that Sailor Epsilon had come barging in on the action just as Sigma was about to deliver the final blow, and she knew that, of course. It was just that Mr Fairchild simply did not accept 'almost.' That was utterly unacceptable; 'almost,' 'nearly,' and 'sort of' were just as well as failure in his eyes. _She_ was a failure. Had failed the only person who thought she was worth anything at all. He would leave her alone. She wouldn't be the chosen one anymore; she would be the _forgotten_ one, the _abandoned_ one. Three, almost four, days of being special--she had liked it, and didn't want to let go of it. She wouldn't get another chance. Of that Laurie was absolutely, one-hundred-percent certain. Her one chance, and she'd blown it completely today, hadn't she? Even though it wasn't her fault, and the circumstances being what they were. He would regret choosing her and marking her, and he would leave her to writhe in the dust in this haunted house on the hill. Another ghost in a corner, dancing in the moonlight and whispering of better times--a brief, shining moment in the sun, less than a week, that had been the best time of her life.

"No," he said sternly. She cast her soft-blue eyes upward at him, silently pleading, almost _screaming_, for his pardon. How delicious. His tongue--long and slender and pointed--slid out and glided over his lips. He could read her like a book. She wanted his forgiveness more than anything else now. He would bat her back and forth for awhile, play with her a bit. Fun and games.

He strode down the hall towards the room they shared, the heavy heels of his snakeskin boots echoing cavernously in the gloom. The door of the master bedroom creaked open at a wave of his hand, revealing the vast bed in the center, piled with cloud-soft white sheets and pillows. While the rest of the house was covered in gloom and dust and cobwebs, this room was clean and beautiful, and pale sunlight filtered in through powder-blue curtains, over windows facing west. It was the room of a king and his pet. Mr Fairchild stepped in, his eyes glittering with malice and contempt as Sigma shuffled in behind him, and gestured at the door again; it was heavy and wooden, and slammed shut so hard that the windows rattled.

She made a soft squeak and shifted from one foot to the other. "I'm so sorry," she repeated quietly. A dangerous glitter of naked, hungry malice flickered in his crimson eyes, but his face remained like slate. He glared at her contemptuously.

"I don't think you're quite sorry enough, Laurie," he said with a snarl. Sigma shifted around from foot to foot again, distress and terror written clearly on her face. She opened her mouth to protest, but thought the better of doing so and closed it. "Saying it so casually won't allow me to dismiss or forgive your _failure_." He stressed the last word, and watched with an inner smirk as she shivered and winced, as if he had skinned and salted her. "_Convince_ me of your sincerity." An awful Chelsea-grin split his face, and his voice rumbled like dark thunder as he spoke again. "I think I'd be more inclined to believe you if you got down on your knees and begged my forgiveness."

"Wh-what?" she asked, slightly incredulous.

"Get down on your knees… bow at my feet… and _beg_," he repeated. For a moment, Sigma didn't move at all; he glowered furiously, his eyes burning again. Finally, though, she obediently sank to her knees on the soft ivory-colored carpet, and his cat-grin reappeared, as nasty and as unnatural as ever--though Sigma never seemed to peg that, which was perfectly fine by him. That was why he liked humans more than any other species in the cosmos. He had seen an awful lot of other species, great and small, and had played lots of delightful games from one edge of the universe to the other, but humans were some of the very easiest to fool. They would proclaim how smart and advanced they were, brag about their achievements and accomplishments, how they could not be blindly led around, how they could not believe enormous, ugly lies. But they did. People ate up lies like candy, and the bigger they were, the easier the lies slid down their gullets.

In reality, he simply wanted to see people bowing before him and begging, squirming, writhing. He wanted to hear them scream and panic and run around in anguish and pain. It was a beautiful thing. He didn't care all _that_ much that she had failed him. There was always tomorrow. He could whip her into finer shape then, and she would not fail him again. Mr Fairchild knew this. Sigma was the sort of person that worked ten times harder when she thought she had failed and Disappointed someone, so he was happy to let her think so. When the word appeared in her mind, when she fretted, it always had a capital letter at the front. That was this one's chief weakness, and that was why he had selected her. She was easily manipulated, and would whip herself into a manic-depressive frenzy if she felt she had been anything less than perfect at the task set before her.

He was shaping her. He had taken a blank, weak Sailor Crystal from the Galaxy Cauldron--the very dregs of it--and given it to a weak creature. He would manipulate her; she would run herself ragged trying to become strong; she would become a sad, desperate creature. Something would be born of that wretched despair and madness, some dark, inhuman beast. A soulless husk, capable of destroying entire worlds with its power.

It was already taking root. He noted earlier that she had been madly scratching at her arms; she had been wildly, worriedly thinking about how much it itched after transforming her arms back into their regular shapes. Her sunset-red painted nails had been chipped ragged clawing at the scaly, darkening skin. Yes, something new was being born within Sailor Sigma, guided by his hands.

A new power.

And there was a lot of potential for power there. Fairchild had taken the weak little Crystals before they latched onto anything. They were blank, flickering and flashing, wondering whether to survive and become stars or to melt and become oblivion once more. They had no true names. Not yet. If they survived, they would be gifted with names, and these names would define them--their power and identities and missions. They would become the memories of stars, the seeds of new planets; they would be sent out into space to start new worlds from scratch.

But until then… until they were given true names… there was unlimited possibility and potential. They could do anything. They could live and become stars, legends, or they could die and become the dust, mere space-trash. They could do anything with the raw power and energy available to them. Burn up suns, create seas, revive the dead, tremble the earth, shatter the skies. Anything at all. Possibility, potential… until they became true stars and were solidified into one rigid role.

He would play with them, proudly march them towards ruin and oblivion. He would destroy them, watch them all writhe and scream and panic in the heat of battles, watch them melt down, watch them die. And when they died, so would their stars--were they that far along in the development process.

He liked to play this game. It was one he had played often in the past with numerous other Sailor Soldiers--both potential stars, like his current toys, and fixed stars, such as one Sailor Sol, and the first Queen Serenity.

Some would have asked why he was doing it. His answer was almost insultingly simple: _because it was great fun_. Things got _boring_ when you had been kicking around the universe for untold aeons, and would be kicking around beyond the end of time itself, you just had to break up the monotony a bit. Besides, what had the universe done for him lately, that he should be concerned for its welfare?

Falling to her knees, Sigma started her apology, and he derived from it a great, twisted pleasure. He smirked, watching her writhe.

"I _am_ sorry," she said in a small voice, staring at his feet. "I didn't mean to… I didn't mean to fail. I wanted to please you by destroying that void-thing, so I tried hard. But I failed you completely by only coming _close_ to it…" She leaned further forward on the ground, bowing deeply, so that her forehead rested on his warm black snakeskin boots. Groveling. Oh, he liked that. He licked his lips in an almost predatory manner. "I… I want to be your Chosen One. I have to fulfill that role for your sake. I don't want to let you down ever again. Please, forgive me…" Silence, heavy and teasing. "Please…" she repeated, desperation edging softly into her voice. Unseen to her, he licked his lips again. Too delicious. "Please…?" Bat her around a bit more. "Please…!" Silence. "Please… please forgive me, Mr Fairchild! M-master!" Her voice sounded more desperate, on the edge of tears. The tip of her tongue touched his boots, and he was unable to suppress a dark chuckle. A nice touch, that.

"Good. You understand why I'm so… _disappointed_ in you. See, failure of any sort won't help us at all. I want to create a new world with you, Sig--a paradise for the lost and for the lonely--those like yourself, who have been so unfairly treated by the unfair, ugly world," he blatantly lied, "but in order to do so, we have to dismantle the old one first, and that's why I'm training you this way. It upsets me to see you failing. It makes me think that you're not trying hard enough." Her tongue laved over his boots in response to this, a silent and earnest apology, beseeching his favor. Another dark chuckle escaped him, and he gently tipped the toe of his boot back, tilting her chin slightly upwards to look at him; he grinned, ratcheting it back into a friendly grin, rather than the malevolent, greedy one he'd had on his face during her groveling apology. "For now, though, you can be forgiven. I will just have to discipline you a bit more, whip you into proper shape." She started to get back up, a faint and relieved smile on her face, but he tsked at her and placed a hand on the top of her head, preventing her from standing up. "Oh, no, no--keep it up, it'll put me in a better mood." Sigma paused just briefly, half a second at most, and bowed her head to lick his boots again. "There's my girl."

Satisfied for the moment, he hummed softly as he thought of tomorrow's activities. Oh, there would be _great _fun to be had tomorrow. Loosing the hounds of Tindalos, perhaps. Or awakening the Great God Cancer--M'Nagalah the Eternal owed him a favor. Or maybe he'd feed the entire North American continent to the White Worm.

Tomorrow held so many possibilities and options and chances; it was always such a great day to be had.


	5. Crawling In My Skin

_**Crawling In My Skin**_

It is something deeply engrained in human nature--to dream, to pretend, and to play. Such fancies have their places; it is how we advance ourselves as a society, and how we validate ourselves as individuals and as a species. Imagination--dreams--led humanity out of the trees and into muddy little hovels, and eventually, into skyscrapers and space shuttles; it created false gods to which man still bows in awe, and ephemeral paradises which he spends his every hour longing for; it birthed arts and sciences, brought war and peace, crowned kings and dethroned emperors. Dreams brought us Leonardo da Vinci and Albert Einstein, and nightmares brought us Arthur Shawcross and Theresa Knorr.

Mankind likes to consider itself an advanced race. But the truth is that we are not all that much better than beasts in fancy skins and glass-walled cages. Humans are ruled by dreams and nightmares, and not by reality. They are invariably tempted by what may be, instead of having to deal with the harsh reality of what simply is. Humans are hardly better than dreams themselves; soft, short-lived, their appearance unnoticed and eventual passing unmourned. The universe will not cry for the saints nor the sinners nor anybody in between; it will not mourn the great and just Queen of Crystal Tokyo any more than it will miss the man who removed other people's skins and shaped it into funny party hats. One day, the planet will keep spinning in its place around a fading star, having shaken people off like a bad case of fleas. We continue to cry to the heavens of existence, of achievements, of art and science, but the universe is a cold and silent place, and contemptuously ignores our childish pleas and inflated sense of self-importance.

The false gods we conjure up give us great comfort. They can be pacified by the correct sacrifices, or placated by a great amount of persistent prayers. Of course, in the end, they're merely grandiose figments of collective imagination.

Real 'gods' offer no such comfort. At least, some suppose them to be gods--outer gods, elder gods, great old ones, whatever you'd like to call them. Some call out to them as gods--and damn themselves, and sometimes entire worlds, in the process--but they are not welcoming of veneration, and are swift to exploit the gullibility of any possible worshippers. These creatures are not, in fact, gods, but nor are they devils. They simply are; they are beasts, albeit possessed of a strange and inhuman cleverness, driven by blind instincts. They take grotesque shapes; they are unclean mockeries of natural law--affronts unto reality itself. They follow their own unique sciences and geometries, and their existence warps space, time, size, and dimension; they do not seem to be made of the same matter that our reality is built with. Don't be fooled, though; they are, most unfortunately, far more real than most other things. There is only one ultimate reality, for which we should all be profoundly grateful, and that is Death--for Death, unlike a lot of the other things lurking in the dark and silent places of the universe, is a very kind fellow. It is also fortunate indeed for humans that we are almost entirely beneath their notice.

Their existence does not bring chaos; their existence is chaos. It is not often that they come to this backwater part of the cosmos for a visit, but when they do, it's an ugly affair for everything involved.

Sometimes, it is something so quiet you don't even notice; for instance, people disappearing without a trace; the invisible gods devour existence and peel and pare away life, starting with soul-stuff, then going layer by layer--skin, flesh, nerves, bones. Entire cities--entire planets--have disappeared in this way, lost to the ages in a matter of minutes, and only the dark-skinned watcher of time, the keeper of the past, knows that there was once something there. She knows, and she remembers, and she's the only one.

Sometimes, it's something far more ostentatious and messy. Great octopoid gods rising from sunken cities, turning the entire world to gibbering madness, eating the moon and the sun like ripe plums. That sort of thing. No amount of worship will appease them, and no amount of sacrifices will sate their monstrous appetites. Luckily, most of these mindless beast-gods will eventually sleep again, though it may take aeons for them to do so; unluckily, by that time, we will all be mad or dead or both.

There is one god who never sleeps. He is a constant presence, his name well-known; his kingdom is that of flesh. All he does is eat and eat; he is never sated, never, and his only desire is to consume everything. He does not kill his followers, offering the gentle mercies of Death; no, he pulses with awful life. He consumes all that is still living and absorbs them into himself, then moves on to his next offering. He is stealthy, patient, always waiting, and it is impossible, even with all of humanity's magnificent sciences and technology, to kill him forever. He swallows up men, women, and children, kings and queens, legacies, empires, and worlds; he is timeless, ever-growing, and ever-living.

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"Oh, come on, it's not that bad. You'll get used to it." the older woman said to the younger lady, who was busy puking into a finely-manicured hedge, covering the delicate pale-orange roses in the half-digested contents of her stomach. The two had just lunched together, and the younger was quickly learning that perhaps it wasn't the smartest thing to do, having lunch right before starting work. They were forensic evidence technicians, waiting to start their work. Usually, the police had at least cleaned up the… well, it wasn't a body still. It was a pile of thick, gray, rope-like intestines and what appeared to be a stomach, lying on the green, lush lawn, near the duck pond. It looked to be pretty goddamn fresh; it was still steaming slightly. That was what had prompted Ms Davies to toss it all over that fine municipal rosebush. It was her first time seeing all this in person, her first proper day on the job. Mrs Gonzales patted her younger friend on the shoulder. "Don't worry. They'll probably have the guys around to pick it up and take it to the ME soon, and we'll start looking when they've done that." Ms Davies moaned, and her friend rubbed her shoulder soothingly. "You'll eventually get used to it."

"Ugh," Ms Davies responded eloquently. She couldn't stop herself from glancing back over at the pile of offal on the ground. It seemed to be _moving_ slightly, squirming away a few inches… no, that couldn't be. Of course organs, once torn from their owners, didn't start moving around. Ridiculous. It had to be nerves. This was her first time doing proper work as an evidence technician, fresh out of school, and she was determined to do a good job.

"Ugh," Ms Davies repeated.

Behind them, unseen to the busy technicians and police officers milling about and barricading off the scene, the offal writhed and squirmed. It slowly wrapped a rope of intestine around a rat crawling through the grass and squeezed tightly. The rat huffed and gasped and squeaked under its crushing grip, clawing, trying to get it to let go--and then it did let go, flopping limply on the ground for now. Another squeak, sounding almost confused, escaped the creature, and it quickly scuttled onward, away from the frightening squeezing thing. It felt a great pressure suddenly building up on its tiny brain, pushing against the insides of its little skull. The headache from hell. It squalled with hideous pain as it continued to stumble through the undergrowth, but something compelled it to march on instead of sitting down and dying the way it should have. The same awful pressure ran down its spine, a swift decay eating up the bone and the tissue. It felt the decay, breaking its body down cell by cell, tissue by tissue, organ by organ, piece by piece. Decay was painful and swift, like being flayed from the inside out.

The rat felt it growing with every shambling step it took. Tumors rose and bloated its organs against its skin, which rippled in hideous, various gooseflesh, and stopped, solidified into tiny, writhing, malignant masses. Still, it marched onward without knowing why. The pressure devouring its brain only told it one thing, over and over and over, in a rumbling, thunderous voice, compelled him to do only one thing--eat eat eat eat eat eat eat… Its dim and freshly tumorous eyes cast about, looking for something with warm, fresh flesh. Hunger. The rat needed to eat. Eat to forget the pain and the feeling of decay, to heal itself. It scrambled through a rosebush with a horrible carrion scent floating around it and nibbled at the foul, congealing puddle beneath the pale-orange roses, but found it unappetizing, insufficient for easing its walking decay. Beyond it, two large figures loomed. The smaller crouched on the ground making disgusted moaning noises. _Eat_? it thought. It snuffled against the one crouched on the ground curiously and hopefully.

"Ew!" she cried. Ms Davies stood up, grabbing at Mrs Gonzales' lapels and aiming a kick at the poor waddling creature on the grass. The women clumsily stumbled backwards together. "What the hell is that thing?"

"Looks like a walking tumor." Now Mrs Gonzales sounded like she was just fighting back the urge to puke all over the rosebushes--oops, too late to fight it now--she let it go all over the bush and wiped her clean, pressed sleeve across her face in a most unladylike manner. For a moment, it looked as though she were going to say something else, but she just came up with a disgusted gurgle and pressed a hand to her mouth. The two women shuffled away swiftly to get themselves out of the sight of the diseased creature, who gave a disappointed-sounding, strangled squeak before moving on to look for the next best thing. Had to eat. Had to sate that soul-rending hunger. It nibbled grass as it went, bit at the thorny rosebush's branches, lumberingly jumped and tried to catch the insects buzzing above it--but they always fluttered just out of reach, torturing it, teasing it.

It ate as it went, but found no satisfaction at all, nothing to soothe the screaming decay eating its own body and being. The decay felt like tiny, starving maggots chewing away on its soft and delicate insides. It tore the rat's body in half width-wise, having eaten away at its skin and fur in that spot completely, but still, the rat kept walking. Both halves of it went their separate ways. The first half writhed forward on its two remaining legs, the rat's teeth gnashing quietly at anything that it passed; the second half wriggled backwards, heading in a different direction. It throbbed with an awful life, even though it lacked a brain or a heart to run it. Blood and some foul, unnatural ichor spilled onto the cheery green grass of the park, and tiny white worms writhed in that awful ichor. A small child and his father obliviously stepped through a puddle of it on their way to the duck pond, tracking it further… only taking notice when the skin on their feet started to itch and to pulse and writhe of its own volition…

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Mr Fairchild's heavy jackboots crushed the squirrel's skull as he brought his large foot down. It made an unpleasant wet crunching noise against the cobalt-tiled floor of the once-grand ballroom, throwing a tiny splatter of blood on the ground; even as it writhed in its supposed dying moments, it wailed horribly. He scraped up the entrails in his hand, examined it studiously, then grinned. The entrails set themselves on fire, consuming it to ash in under two seconds, and he deposited the remains back on the floor where it had come from. A small wind blew the ashes away, only a memory now.

He had been Out all morning. It had been a nice day to go out Wandering. Fairchild had sat in the middle of the garden outside of the borrowed old mansion--his servant had cleared it that far, practicing her attacks--in his stylishly tattered jeans and heavy boots, legs crossed. To the untrained eye, he might have been one of those pleasant men who start the day with a few sips of soy chai, a bowl of organic breakfast cereal with milk from free-range cows, and an hour of meditation before heading off work as a bicycle messenger or a massage therapist or whatever. But a red and malevolent spark danced in his eyes, even when he was Out. This wasn't a man who was concerned with the northern spotted owl or the rainforests or the ozone layer, or with life in general. His concern was purely the game that he played--the game of the stars.

His next move in his game was putting the Pestilent God Zerfall into play. He had called for the creature, who had busily been eating away at the tiny brown dwarf caught between the orbit of Algol, and the creature had come, starting in the body of a homeless man, killing him with its walking, conscious decay, then moving on to a rat that happened to come to nibble on it a little. It was an efficient creature, taking the forms of millions of tiny burrowing maggots, which ate away at everything it touched. Whatever it touched would become a part of its godly form, trying to soothe its savage, neverending hunger. It would eat up whatever there was to be found, chew up all the life crawling across entire worlds, but never fill itself up.

It was working its way through two evidence technicians at a crime scene now. They would touch their children when they went home that evening, transferring the ugly little maggots, and their children had dates the next afternoon. It was going to catch like wildfire.

The reflection in the ballroom window flickered and shifted to show his true shape. Hundreds of mouths full of jagged teeth grinned as one. Today, the city would scream in agony as its citizens felt themselves rotting away, craving a way to get rid of the pain of it all. There would be death and devastation, despair and destruction, all under his direction.

Good times.

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"Those things will give you cancer," Morgan said with a nervous, lopsided sort of smile. Moffat puffed out a blue-gray smoke-ring and pocketed his lighter.

"Pretty much everything gives you cancer these days, and the things that don't will still kill you in some other way. I figure it's best to enjoy what you can while you're still alive," he said.

"I suppose so," she agreed. She fidgeted a bit.

Slightly over two weeks' worth of tomorrows, and her second chance had not yet presented itself; she was getting rather anxious about it. The inactivity, the waiting--it felt as though she had blown it entirely. Morgan could still transform--she tried to do so every day, just to make sure--and every night, she still dreamed of that dark, warm place… It frightened her a bit because of how alien it was. There had been something about that dream she liked about it, and if asked, she would not have been able to tell you why it was so comforting.

But so far, no chance of redemption had presented itself yet. No flickering, slavering shadow-creatures ravaging the city. No hoard of tiny metal spiders marching nightmares into the world. There were no new creatures to destroy, nothing to take up arms against, nothing to protect the populace from. No reason to transform. She _had_ been trying to help rebuild that part of the Westside that had faded away--even though nobody could remember what had been there, if there ever had been anything there in the first place. It was a great mystery. There wasn't much else to do… considering that La Reve had fired her. Now that she had no job, a lot of free time had opened up. With the economy the way it was, she would probably have months' worth of free time coming up while looking for a job. Assuming, of course, that she didn't get maimed or slaughtered, should her chance at redemption finally come…

She would have even been happy to have just taken down a purse-snatcher or stopped a gas station robbery or rescued a homeless person from a cruel, unwarranted beatdown from some young miscreants--something small like that could have made her something great and worthy of the power she had been given, worthy of the title of Sailor Epsilon, hero.

But no.

Nothing had happened.

Not yet, anyway.

She hadn't yet questioned why Officer Moffat had shown up on her doorstep in plainclothes (and he hadn't offered an explanation, either), but she was taking it as an opportunity given to her at last. Perhaps he had brought her something to do. She would have liked that. Would have liked being good and useful at last. Morgan chewed on her index fingernail nervously. But what if she was in trouble? What if Officer Moffat was going to arrest her and hold her responsible for the shadow-worm that ate those parts of the Westside? She'd never even gotten detention in school--had never been in trouble. No, she was a compulsive rule-follower, always careful to stay far, far out of trouble, to not bother anybody. But… he didn't look angry with her. She glanced at him. He was quietly smoking his cigarette as they stood on the concrete steps in front of her apartment building, occasionally watching people pass by on the sidewalk. He had simply told her, 'come with me,' and she had had to follow him--him being an officer of the law and everything, even in plainclothes. Down the stairs they had gone; he had requested that they stop at the porch in order for him to have a cigarette, and so she had agreed to it (although she didn't like smoke).

So she sat on the step, nervously waiting for Mr Moffat to tell her what they were going to do today. At any rate, it would be something different. Most of her days off were spent taking lonely, aimless meanders through the city's numerous pointless winding streets, seeing the same things all around. Gray concrete. Gray steel. Gray smog. Gray, sad folks. Gray. Dullness. She sort of wished she lived in the glamorous part of town, but hey--spit in the river and see if it comes back to you. Then, around sundown, she would come back to her apartment and read until sunrise, at which point she went to sleep for a few hours, for a few blissful dreams. Usually, they were cheery dreams of carnivals and kittens and the majestic beaches of foreign lands. Just lately, though, her dreams had been of that dark, warm place… and that darkness had slowly been shifting around…

She looked at the man, wondering if he would have rather been off with friends drinking--or whatever adults with friends did--instead of hanging around with _her _on the apartment building's porch. She didn't have any real friends to speak of; Mr Moffat was actually the closest thing she had. Maybe they would go and do whatever friendly people did together. It had been awhile since she had had friends, and she sort of forgot. When her last friend had drifted away, she had been in eighth grade. Before the drift, they had gone to places like the park and the library, playing the last of the imagination games that normal people would ever play. For a second, she hated herself deeply. She had gone on playing imagination games, even if they were disguised from everyone else; she would daydream or read books and picture herself as off having magical adventures. (How well had that turned out in real life? Still, it was exciting…) Responsible and a Very Good Girl, sure, but still a child because of the games that nobody else played. She was sure that Miss Sigma didn't sit around daydreaming like Morgan still did (despite now having her adventurous life), nor did the handsome man in the leather jacket that accompanied Miss Sigma. Morgan, to this day--even at the age of twenty--wasn't sure how to play the games that regular adults did. She glanced up at Mr Moffat. He probably knew. He seemed to be in his mid-twenties--thirty at the very oldest. Grown-up to be sure. She had only met him twice (well, three times now, she supposed) but he seemed to be fairly mature--practical and responsible, like--if a bit bossy and loud. The girl often alternated between wanting to go and have an adventurous life and wanting to be normal and accepted amongst all of the other adults. She wanted to have friends to go and have fun and adventures with, but she was plainly rotten at attracting people. Just an awkward sort, no matter how hard she tried otherwise and no matter how much she relaxed and tried to Just Be Herself; in fact, that Just Be Yourself thing seemed to work against her, truth be told.

She shook her head slightly. Well, even if she didn't have any friends, she could have adventures now. There was that. There was also always tomorrow for dashing rescues and adventures and perhaps the day after that for friends. Always tomorrow.

People were bustling around. Saturday, of course, so it was lousy with people on their day off and loads of tourists, too. She wondered if it was Mr Moffat's day off, as well, or if this was police business, or what. She wasn't sure what to ask, or if it would be rude to ask outright or not.

He had shown up about half an hour ago. Just knocked on the door, come in, and asked how the past couple of weeks had been going, friendly as you please. She made some tea, which they shared, while Mr Moffat sat on the ugly, tattered armchair in the corner. It was the only chair she had in her modest apartment, and it was parked near the air-mattress on which she slept. There wasn't a lot of furniture or decoration because she just couldn't be arsed to do it, really. That was part of it. The other part was that there were a lot of stairs. As out of shape as she was, she couldn't carry up furniture to the second floor by herself. So she just had an armchair and an air-mattress, and that was about it. There were also some milk crates that she had come across at a thrift store, which stored all of her books, and could conceivably used as chairs in a pinch, if she lost her mind and decided to throw a party or something.

He had just asked her to come with him, and she had nervously agreed. He had asked because he was admittedly slightly worried about her. There hadn't been any monster attacks or anything in the last two weeks (not any that had been noticeable as of yet, his mind added most disturbingly), and he hadn't seen her. Of course, at the end of that last fight, she seemed pretty torn up--not terribly surprising, given the events. It had occurred to him last night that he should probably check in on her to make sure she was all right--you know, still sane, at least. The last thing he needed on his hands was a person with a magic Vulcan cannon snapping under a strain like that--so it had been time to go and check in after all this time. She seemed okay, if a bit fidgety. Still… He didn't have anything else to do, so he wanted to take her out and help her relax. Obligation. It would be the responsible thing to do, wouldn't it, if he knew that she was kind of shell-shocked when he had last seen her, and if he knew what kind of shit she was capable of mowing down with that Gatling of hers. It would have been irresponsible not to check in on her and make sure that she was still holding up all right. In some way, he would have felt that it was his fault if she'd snapped under the strain and gone around fucking things up in his city. And he certainly didn't need that--no, thank you. And besides… she was kind of cute. He wouldn't mind taking out a cute young lady to the beach. Beaches were pretty relaxing, what with the soft sand and the sound of the ocean and all; and if the sunshine and sand and saltwater didn't suit you (it didn't suit Moffat; he couldn't swim, so he stayed on the shore), there were always greasy concession stands, and those were pretty cool, too. Yeah, it was bad for you, but he liked greasy hot-dog-stand food. Nothing better. Maybe that was all that the girly needed--good old greasy American food. It certainly cheered him up when he was in a funk.

Cigarette finished, he led her towards his car. It wasn't his police car, or the borrowed Buick; no, it was an ancient Oldsmobile station wagon, painted a truly hideous pea-green color. Ian opened the car door for her, and she climbed in. He'd been driving the Oldsmobile for the past few weeks because, of course, that thing had jolly well killed his cruiser, and a car was necessary. He was still in deep shit over it, and that really frosted his shorts. He had never been in trouble before, and he didn't like it, god dammit. Even when he was in school, he had never gotten so much as a detention. The car's destruction hadn't been his fault, but who the fuck would believe him? 'Yeah, sorry, chief, a Jello octopus monster ate my car while I was out cruising around the city with a cute magical girl in a Halloween outfit.' If he hadn't been there, he wouldn't have believed it, either.

"Um. Would you wanna go to the beach?" he asked her as he fruitlessly tried to start the car three times. The fourth time, it caught, and he pulled out of the parking space. She smiled genuinely for the first time that day. It looked much nicer on her than the tense, frightened looks he had seen before.

"Oh, sure, Officer," she said agreeably. Morgan liked beaches--not so much the sand, but the sound and the sight of the blue-green water as it lapped up against the shore. What did the new-age types call it? White noise, or something? Whatever it was, she simply liked the soft, hypnotic sound of water.

"Right-o."

For a long time, neither of them said anything at all. Ian concentrated on driving the car, and Morgan hummed tunelessly as she looked out of the window at people on the sidewalks, fiddling with the hem of her shirt idly. After about twenty minutes sitting in a traffic jam, Ian felt he had to ask something, just to break the tense, nervous silence between them.

"So, uh… you're a superhero, right?" he said. She tilted her head a bit.

"Um. I suppose so. Sort of. I'd like to be one of the good guys." Morgan wisely left out all of the anguish she'd put herself in after the last fiasco. He nodded. The car inched forward a bit. Fuckin' traffic jams. Another short silence. He scratched his scruffy sideburns and adjusted the rearview mirror, making a mental note to shave the following morning; he was getting a bit whiskery.

"Do you know anything about that Sigma girly, or the guy that pops up with her? The dude in the leather jacket?"

"No, sir," she replied.

"So you don't know anything about what they might be up to."

"No, sir."

"Hm. I don't trust the guy," he said conversationally. "He just looks pretty dodgy, is all. Maybe not the girl, not entirely, but the guy… dunno, he's got too many goddamn teeth. Like a fuckin' muppet or something." After a moment's consideration, Morgan nodded in agreement. "Bet he's the supervillain you're supposed to fight," he said.

"Supervillain?" she repeated, her lips twitching up into a shy, amused smile.

"Sure, why not?" He shrugged. "Superheroes always have villains. You're the hero, obviously. Good, All-American, cute, wholesome-looking sort of girl." She blushed modestly and fidgeted, unsure of how to respond to the compliments. "And look at him, man--he's just creepy. That Sigma's pretty creepy, too. Like she's the walking dead or something. Something about her eyes. Officer's instincts," he said.

"I suppose I can trust your instincts, Mr Moffat," she said, hiding the smile behind her hand. Honestly, though, she wasn't sure. They had shown up to destroy that dark-thing the last time. Villains didn't go around saving people on a regular basis, did they? And they had introduced themselves so politely that first night. She wasn't quite so sure about their villainy, really.

"Damn straight."

An enormous bug splatted onto the windshield. Ian frowned and tried to turn the windshield wipers on to get it off. The sprayers gasped dustily and didn't spray anything onto the glass, while the wipers themselves scraped noisily across the glass, causing Morgan to wince. All that this accomplished was spreading its tiny, unnaturally-bright-silver innards across the glass, making it hard to see. "Geez, what the fuck was that thing?" he asked, bewildered. The guts on the glass squirmed of their own volition, seemed to bubble and twitch. Morgan leaned forward in her seat. That wasn't a natural, regular bug. Of that she was certain. She wasn't certain what kind it was--just that it wasn't natural. She rolled her window up, just to be safe, and peered out, trying to catch a glimpse of another bug. Dimly, it occurred to her that this was probably her chance. But she was busy trying to scan the difficult landscape of Los Angeles to find another bug. A homeless person shambled past, his eyes startlingly big and bloodshot--so much that she could see it from where she sat in the car, so big that they looked as though they were about to fall out and dangle on their strings--and bumped into several people on the way, as if he didn't even see them. Like a zombie.

Now there was a troubling thought--zombies.

She didn't know why that had come up in her mind while she was trying to think about the foul and unnatural insect, whose guts were still trying to squirm across the windshield on their own. Some of the bubbling, twitching white innard-paste flew off of the side of the glass and splattered onto a woman in the next car, who had had her window rolled down. The other woman--a gorgeous woman with honey-blond hair and big brown eyes--made a disgusted face and tried to scrape it off of her skin and hair. She gave Morgan a brief, ugly look and reached for a Taco Bell napkin from the glove compartment. Morgan glanced back up at the glass. Dozens of tiny little white worms were sliding through the clear, sticky paste. Up, down, left, right; they were scraping tiny teeth across the glass, hard enough to leave long, ugly cracks. Not just scratches, but cracks and chips; within a minute or so, the worms were well on their way to chewing a hole into the center of the windshield.

"Mr Moffat?" she said, reaching for his sleeve and tugging it.

"What's that?" The car inched forward again. Traffic seemed to be picking up a little bit. He took his eyes off of the road for just a second and glanced at the rapidly-growing hole in the window. "Fuck," he said. He swung through the intersection on a red light (which he hated to do), thankfully avoiding any of the other cars, then pulled into a parallel parking space. Both of them threw open their doors and hopped out, climbing up onto the sidewalk. Morgan looked around. She didn't see any more insects fluttering about, but she saw a handful of people shambling about the pavement. Weeping welts and leaking tumors throbbed and squirmed on every inch of every bare patch of skin, and even more were clearly visible underneath the pretty, trendy clothing of the urban hipsters. The small group of people grinned awfully, the flesh of their face having apparently melted away, leaving nothing but a wide white Chelsea-grin, seeming to take absolutely no notice of whatever was wrong with their skin; they walked onwards, dripping foul pus and little chunks of wet, decayed skin onto the white sidewalk. In the trail they left, there were little twitching worms nibbling through. There was a rotten smell in the air--a sick and heavy scent of walking death, running decay. Morgan held up a hand to her mouth as she gagged from the sight and the smell. It sent her dizzy, staggering back against the window of a nearby shop. She tried to flatten herself against it to avoid accidentally touching the creatures. She got the suspicion that if she touched them, she would wind up just the same; those disgusting little white maggots would chew into her skin and nest into her organs. Ugh! No… no, she wouldn't let that happen. Not to her, and not to anybody else.

Morgan also got the feeling that this was her second chance, but she wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. Shooting a monster with the gun would have been easy enough. How did you stop a zombie plague? There weren't that many of them (_yet_, her mind added nastily), but still--how did you contain them? She'd read a book once about surviving a zombie apocalypse (for some bizarre reason, it had been in the humor section, so she had picked it up expecting laughs, but the book had given her nightmares for three weeks straight). She tried to remember any useful tips from that book.

Get away from the zombies. That was probably a good start.

She grabbed at Ian's sleeve again. "Let's go in here," she said quietly. He nodded and followed her into the shop--a little upscale boutique. Fashionable accessories were piled up everywhere the eye could see--pretty scarves, shining bracelets, fancy necklaces. All prohibitively expensive, of course. He didn't understand why people bothered with such fancy things, really. He preferred fairly inexpensive, simple, and practical gifts. Maybe that was why people always winced upon getting his name out of the hat during the department's secret Santa parties come Christmastime. They would get a toaster or something for their holiday cheer, instead of something pretty, like a bracelet or some other kind of bauble.

"So. Zombies?" he asked simply. There wasn't any other word he could think of for that group of people that had shuffled past. Whatever they were now, they certainly weren't normal folks anymore.

"Y… yes, sir, I… I think they are." She nodded slowly.

"Well, shit." He reached for the cigarettes in his pocket. Of course, it was against the law to smoke inside of a public building in California. Right now, he didn't care all that much, although he hated himself for not caring at that moment. Laws were laws, after all. Still... He lit one up and leaned against a table full of sparkly gypsy-scarves. They were probably flammable. He'd be careful to ash it on the ground, then. "Any ideas, then, girly?"

"I'm thinking, sir," she said. She paced up and down between a rack with silver bracelets and a wall with expensive handbags.

"My first thought is that you should make with the magic," he suggested.

"That would probably help, yes." She dug through the small canvas bag at her side; she found the little crystal at the very bottom of it, under a small purple toothbrush and an official Red Cross-issue CPR face-mask--both things that were good to have just in case. "Epsilon Power, Make Up!"

Ian ignored the magical light-show and stared at the burning cigarette in his hand. How could he protect his city from zombies? That was something you weren't ever taught… anywhere, let alone the police academy. They didn't show you that in zombie movies, either. Even the good old Romero movies didn't offer any helpful tips, aside from "shoot them in the head." People in the old Romero movies never ended up well. He frowned and ashed his cigarette, then took a drag from it. That didn't help at all, thinking like that. Defeatist attitude. Pointless to think things like that. He wondered if the folks at the department would believe him if he asked for their help in fending the things off. Well… he and the sailor-girly would just have to make sure they didn't spread the plague on. That seemed a sensible course of action. Stop it before it starts in too bad. He looked up at Sailor Epsilon, who leaned on the barrel of the Gatling gun thoughtfully. A pair, they must have looked. Scruffy, two-days-unshaven Officer Moffat, in his brown Guinness T-shirt and raggedy old blue jeans and tattered blue Converses, standing there smoking a cigarette, right next to Sailor Epsilon, a pudgy girl in a cute white costume--snowy-white except for the yellow stripe on the sailor-collar and the pale-yellow ribbon on her chest, leaning on a Gatling gun with a seven-foot-long barrel. Together, they fight crime.

Guns were the answer to it, he supposed. That was the one consistent thing in the movies. Get 'em in the head, they won't be able to get you. It bothered both Ian and Epsilon a bit. They were still people, whether they were the walking dead or not; they were still possessed of some form of brains, and were still up and moving. Sailor Epsilon wondered if they still thought about anything, and a chill ran up her spine. That'd be like murder, wouldn't it? Creepy thought. She wanted to be a good girl again, a hero, and heroes didn't go around murdering other people. Bogglesome. She supposed she would have to ask Mr Moffat about it; him being a police officer, he'd probably know about really subtle nuances of the law like that far better than she would. Or maybe not.

"Hey, Mr Moffat," she said.

"Yeah?"

"So. Um. What's our game plan?" He took a drag on his cigarette and ashed it onto the tile floor. "I mean, obviously, we should go after those… things. Zombies. Um. Whatever they are. But… what will we do with them when we've caught up with them?"

"Shoot 'em," he said with a shrug. "They're not going to be doing anybody any good like that." He pinched the cigarette out between his forefinger and thumb and put it in his pocket for later. It wasn't quite finished yet. "Let's go, girly. We've got work to do."

-------------------------------------------------------

Billy Largo, age fifteen, felt rotten. Quite literally. He had just gone out for an afternoon at the mall with his friends (and Michelle West--what a knockout she was!) and it had been, for the most part, enjoyable. He and Michelle West had gone to the Hot Topic together, and he had bought her a Hello Kitty choker, since she had displayed an interest in it. It had cost all of the money that his parents had given him, but Michelle had been worth it.

But something had happened since then, and he felt rotten.

Someone had bumped into him, he thought. Maybe that was it. Ever since then, he had felt his skin crawling and his muscles burning against his bones. Like being eaten alive from the inside out. Like he was burning up with a five-hundred-degree fever. Billy had noticed that Michelle seemed to squirm, too, like she had an itch she couldn't scratch on her back or something. Red welts had appeared on her skin and were currently dripping a foul-smelling pus onto the neat, clean tile floor of the food court; the tile hissed when the acidic liquid slopped onto it, smoking slightly. If he squinted just right, he could see tiny white squirming things in the venomous ichor, and if he had stopped to look long enough, he could have seen them squirming off in different directions, being stomped on by the passersby.

Later, these passersby would start to itch. Their skin would start to weep and flake off onto the ground, spreading more of the bilious bile. They would become hungry and seek their fill in any way they could.

Billy and Michelle had come to the food court because both of them had felt hungry; they had gotten an enormous mountain of nachos in a bowl from a skeevy little stand in the center of the food court and sat down at a table under the skylight. Michelle had eaten a few and then gone to get something else--returning with a foot-long meatball sub and an entire stuffed Sbarro's pizza. Awful hungry, it seemed. And that was when Billy had noticed that he was just as hungry. They had shared it, but couldn't get their fill. Only crumbs remained of their colossal repast--but Billy felt like he was still starving. He eyed the centerpiece of the table, and noticed that Michelle was eyeing it, too. It was full of sporks and napkins, as well as little convenience packets of relish, salt, and mustard. He took several of each little packet and squeezed them into his mouth. Still nothing. His eyes watered, and the world before him jumped and danced. Soon, he was indiscriminately shoveling the packets into his mouth, not even tearing them open--devouring the paper and plastic whole. Michelle was doing the same; she eyed Billy's hand hungrily and seized it, chewing noisily on his finger. At any other time, it would have been slightly sexy, but not now--it was just painful. But he hardly noticed it. He was hungry, himself, and he had to try and fill that hunger. Billy seized two sporks and shoved them into his mouth, barely perceiving it as he choked and gagged on the plastic tines. It didn't fill him at all. He weakly grabbed at the packets of salt and relish and shoved several more of those into his mouth without even opening them. He had to eat. Had to eat something. Fill him up. Had to eat. It felt good to consume. Soothing. Nice. It drove away the rotting feeling for a little bit. But as soon as he had stopped, the feeling started again. He watched, detached, as Michelle tore his swiftly-rotting finger off of his hand, not feeling the pain of this random amputation, but feeling a world of pain from the decay that was eating at his body. She crammed it, bone and flesh, into her mouth, chewing clumsily and gagging on it, desperately trying to swallow it back.

Heavy and unrelenting pressure grew on Billy's brain, and his thoughts of Michelle were swiftly driven from him under the crushing pressure in the center of his brain. Every thought of anything else was supplanted by one urge--not even a true thought, just a mad, instinctual urge--to consume, to kill the pain of decay. That was all that Billy knew. For all anybody knew, it might have been the only thing he ever knew--the urge to eat and consume to kill the pain, to stop the decay, the mind-blowing, screaming burn of decay dancing on his every nerve…

His neck puffed up like an inner tube, a violent shade of bruise-purple, around the sporks jammed inconveniently, at awkward angles, in his throat. That caused more pain with every ragged breath he took, and he felt he had to eat more to dull that pain.

…_eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat eat EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT EAT eat eat eat eat…._

His mouth was full of fire.

-------------------------------------------------------

"Go on, girly. I'll cover you," he encouraged. Moffat had his taser and his gun at the ready, and both items provided him comfort. They had caught up to the clumsily-shambling things. He was careful to step over the patches of squirming, living ichor that the critters had left in their wake. He wasn't sure of the how or the why, but he was sure that touching that shit wouldn't be good for either one of them. He had asked Epsilon why she didn't just fly over it; he had seen Sigma flying the last time. She had fiddled with the hem of her skirt with one hand (the other keeping her gun close to her body) and murmured, pink-faced, about how improper and unladylike it would have been to fly ahead of him. He saw her point, honestly--that skirt was damn short, not that he minded all that much--but he would have thought that a survival instinct would have taken precedence over ladylike behavior. Maybe not. People were weird. He shrugged to himself and hopped neatly and gracefully over a puddle of the disgusting fluid.

They were closely following behind the handful of urban hipsters that they had spied, and Epsilon had thoughtfully thrown up a shimmering forcefield around Moffat before they started walking; it surrounded him closely, like a suit of armor that one could only see in a proper light. It seemed to be holding pretty well. She had wanted him to be safe. Even if he didn't have any superpowers like she did, he was probably the only one of the two who knew for sure what to do, and she could really use a compass like that. She didn't react well in emergency situations (even now, she was only barely staving off some violent shudders and forcing back some violent gagging--the sight and the smell of those creatures--it was getting closer--it was a powerful and awful thing--), but she could trust a police officer to be calm and level-headed. That was what they were paid to do, after all--to respond to emergencies and control the panic and paranoia. And he seemed a nice fellow, anyway. She didn't want him infected with whatever those once-people had. It would probably be hideously painful and horrible.

They were coming closer behind the shambling monstrosities. The creatures' skins had peeled away, leaving them husks--shredded, red, pulpy masses of dangling muscle on ugly-yellow, bony frames, full of hundreds of tiny wriggling maggots, splattering blood and some other foul and unknown fluid onto the sidewalk. Wisely, the other Angelinos had cleared the way--ducking into shops or hiding in stairwells or just standing the hell out of the way--when they smelled that putrid scent and then heard the sloshing, bloody gurgling noises that the things made. Disgusted, confused faces peered out of windows to either side of them. Some curious faces eyed the officer and the Sailor Soldier who were carefully making their way after the creatures.

A part of Sailor Epsilon wished that she were inside and safe, away from these awful things. But the other part reminded her that that was cowardice, and she had to be a hero. Had to be a good girl again. This was her second chance, and she'd better take it; a third chance would not come to her. Of that she was pretty certain, though she wasn't sure why. Because you would be dead from that same plague, some little voice said in the back of her mind; there wouldn't be anybody to protect you from it. If not her, then who? It was a random disjointed, probably grammatically-incorrect thought, but it made her dig her heels into where she was.

That was it, then. She had to be the good guy--or girl, rather. Had to be a hero. Had to protect people. Because nobody else could. Nobody else had this kind of power. Only she did… she and Sigma, she amended. But she didn't know where Sigma was, and even then--there were only two of them. Nobody else could use this powerful gift. A gift. Yes. She had to use it to ensure the survival of the people, and of herself…

And besides which, it would really be awful, wouldn't it, trying to survive a widespread zombie apocalypse. These four or five urban hipster kids, she could handle; hey, she had the gun. She just wasn't sure of an enormous swarm… say, five billion of them.

Sailor Epsilon crouched into position in a dry patch of the sidewalk, halfway into a shop's doorway--free of the disgusting, crawling ichor--and carefully tried to aim the Gatling at the creatures' backs--a surprise attack, so she wouldn't have to look at any awful skinless faces. But first--she waved her hands in a throwing motion. First, she would immobilize them, catch them, drag them down so that they would be easier to catch. "_Safety Net_!" She found that saying some words before using her attacks seemed to give them a purpose--gave her some more control over them--and seemed to ground her back into reality when she wanted to crawl back in her brain and not deal with this stuff. But she had to. Had to deal with it. Had to do it. A heavy, wide, thick-roped net launched out and covered the bloody-bones monsters, tripping them up and slamming them down to the pavement. A gurgling roar of pain escaped them almost in unison, and Epsilon clapped a gloved hand to her mouth to suppress another heave. Behind her, Mr Moffat patted her shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. "Thank you," she said weakly, managing to strangle back the rising bile of disgust long enough to say something. Say something else, she thought. Whatever spell will kill those things. Epsilon glanced at the puddles of ichor. Carefully, though. Whatever spell it was, it would have to be careful, so that this stuff didn't splatter all over and make it worse than it already was. She wondered if her gun had a "disintegrate" setting. For a moment, she looked it over and found that it didn't have any such settings; there was just a place where a chain of ammunition (which never ran out, it seemed, no matter how much she fired it, which was very perplexing) fed into it, a handle to hold onto, and the two handles--triggers, she supposed--that she had to squeeze in order to shoot the gun. Maybe the key was in the words that she used instead… maybe it would change the purpose of the ammunition… something to think about, wasn't it? It was _magic_. Magic munitions. Perhaps she could repurpose the bullets for whatever she needed to fight in this way…

Moffat, meanwhile, was quietly slipping over towards the creatures, his gun at the ready. Headshot time. He was glad that Epsilon had covered him with that forcefield. As he fired his gun into the leftmost creature's head (making an ugly squishing noise as the bullet bit in), it splattered into a soft pulp (was a regular old SIG that powerful, normally? It was like the monster's head was just a glob of red and particularly pulpy Jello or something) and blood splashed up against the forcefield--but left his own body clean and untouched. Thoughtful sort, Sailor Epsilon was. He didn't want whatever they had. Briefly, he wondered what it would be like to be a zombie, and the man shuddered violently, squeezing off a shot into some nearby pavement. A little chunk of stone bounced off of the forcefield. He gagged a little bit as he moved on to the next one. Though the net had slammed it to the ground and was doing a good job of keeping it tangled up enough so that it couldn't get back up, its face was being ground to an even bloodier pulp as it tried to munch on the cement. Little shreds of face-muscle were starting to pile up beside its head. Moffat gulped and closed his eyes tightly for just a split second while he shot it and moved on to the next one. When he cracked open one of his eyes again, he had to immediately shut it again. The bullet had gone through its head just fine and splattered what scant brains had been left onto the pavement and the heavy net, but there were some disturbingly gelatinous bones still grinding themselves away at the pavement, chomping mindlessly and sightlessly--in a weird rhythm with the twitching worms inside of it.

"Fuck," Moffat said queasily. He struggled with it for a moment, gagging and heaving, and finally took several steps away to puked onto a flowerpot filled with sunny yellow daffodils. Epsilon stood up from her position and trotted over clumsily, trying all at once to avoid the spots of the still-squirming fluid that the zombie-things had dripped onto the ground and to balance the gun against her body. She walked around the pile of bodies (still mindlessly gnashing their teeth and chomping at the ground, to various degrees of liveliness) and knelt next to the man. He grabbed at her shoulder and squeezed it tightly. It seemed to make him feel better--brought him back to reality. That was how she felt, wasn't it? Made him think.

"Um," she said.

"Yeah, I'm fine now. You take care of it." He waved his other hand vaguely in the direction of the foul beasts. "I'm going to finish puking. Don't wait up for me too long." With that, he let go of her shoulder and did exactly as he said. Epsilon turned around and looked at the zombies. She was glad that she had figured out the safety-net trick. They were trying to wriggle upright to keep moving, to seek out something new to nosh on, undoubtedly (she gagged again behind her hand) but the heavy rope kept them tangled up.

She had to find out some trick to disintegrate them. Otherwise, they would keep on moving and twitching and squirming and gnashing their teeth and _eating_… She shuddered a bit, then gripped her gun tightly, steadied herself, and shuffled a few feet back on the untouched pavement. Moffat apparently took a hint from this--some epic fuckin' shit was about to go down, if she was backing up like that to take a shot at those things--and followed her, stumbling a bit. At any rate, he seemed glad to be away from them. He stood behind her.

Around them, in the windows of shops and apartments and restaurants, and sitting in their cars, the populace of Los Angeles watched them. It felt awfully silly to Sailor Epsilon. It was like the world had stopped turning to watch a silly girl in an immodest sailor costume standing behind an enormous Gatling gun--standing on the sidewalk of just one street out of thousands in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. Granted, it probably was an unusual sight. But still… the city had gone silent and still out of curiosity, and it was profoundly disturbing.

Well, then.

Moffat squeezed her shoulder again encouragingly.

"The city," he said weakly.

"Yes, sir, Mr Moffat." She dug her heels in and held the gun steady, trying to think of a properly cool-sounding phrase--whatever would get these things to go away forever, consume them to ash in just a few rounds. She still felt a little guilty--the writhing, biting things had once been human, after all. But they weren't. Not anymore. She didn't know what they were now, and that troubled her. Maybe they still thought. Maybe they didn't. How could she know? She got the feeling that if they did still think, she most certainly didn't want to know what they thought about.

Words came to her. The dust-words.

"_Pulsar Missile_!" she exclaimed, firing the gun. A blinding, pulsing light issued forth, spitting out hundreds of sharp, burning red shells biting into the pavement and into the once-human plague-creatures. When they struck the pavement, the bullets seemed to melt tiny puddles into it; when they struck the creatures, there arose a nasty smell of baking spoiled meat, an awful stench… Three thousand burning, fiery rounds per second. It was like operating a Gatling _flamethrower_. The power of it sent her stumbling back slightly, and she struggled to keep the gun under control, to keep it concentrated on pulverizing those creatures and all that they had dropped on the ground behind them. For the safety of the city and the world… for survival… for tomorrow. Round after round, little by little… There was a sound of a hoarse, gurgling scream--she thought she heard some English words in them--"_hungryyyyyy_!" perhaps--but dismissed it the best she could--and a sound of shattering glass and screaming metal.

When she got back up, she squinted through a cloud of dust, her hands still tightly gripping the gun. Just in case. But there was hardly any need for worry: The dust-words had worked. There was a crater in the pavement, and around the edges, molten cement bubbled and dripped; there were no more gurgling plague-things, no more net covering them. Gone. There was just dust. Dust, as well as steel shavings from three nearby cars that had been seared sloppily into pieces (she would have to leave long, apologetic notes on the windshields; she wondered if Mr Moffat had a pen with him), and a carpet of broken glass from a shattered storefront and from the car windows. Gone, too, were the bubbling, squirming globs of ichor, boiled away by the heat from the Pulsar Missile attack. She blinked, feeling a bit dizzy. Did she just win a fight? Wasn't much of a fight, she supposed, as she'd disintegrated some zombies that were caught in a mass of heavy ropes and unable to get up, instead of actually battling to the death. She wished it had been a more noble or equal fight, so she could brag about it. This had been the most practical way of doing things--she had discussed it with Mr Moffat before the attack--but somehow, it still lacked an element of badassery.

She also felt slightly bad for it. They had _once_ been human, those things. That kept coming up in her mind. Inescapable fact. But the other part of it was a simple truth--they were deader-than-dead, only dust _now_, and millions of Los Angeles' people would live to see another day without eating anybody else's brains, or whatever the zombies had been intent on doing. Always tomorrow. Tomorrow, the sun would rise, the city would stir to its real life, and the world would keep on spinning. Comforting thought.

Moffat clapped a hand on her shoulder yet again.

"A bit of overkill, don't you think?" he asked.

"Are you going to arrest me?" she inquired sheepishly, a nervous smile spreading across her round face. That would be something, wouldn't it? That never happened to Supergirl.

"Hm." He seriously considered this matter for a moment, scratching his scruffy chin. She had just caused several thousand dollars' worth of property damage, and destroyed city property, too. But on the other hand, she had _also_ possibly just _saved_ the city (or maybe even the world…?) from those things. The man wondered why they didn't teach this kind of complex moral and legal shit in school. Probably because this shit just didn't happen, not in the comfortably boring, routine reality _he_ had gotten familiar with over the past twenty-six years of his life. Still, property damage, destruction of city property… He mulled it over awhile, then he grinned; it was mildly unnerving. Before, she had only seen a determined, serious expression on his face, never a big, toothy grin. "I'm off-duty, Morgan," he said with a shrug. "It's out of _my_ hands." She gave a nervous, grateful smile to the man. The expression was brief, though; the smile disappeared as something else seemed to enter her mind almost immediately afterward.

"Hey, Mr Moffat?" she said, tilting her head slightly to one side, staring at the crater.

"What's that?"

"Do… do you think there's more of these things out in the city somewhere?" she asked. The thought was disturbing, and she couldn't quite shake it out of her head. The grin fell from the man's face as soon as the question had left her lips. But he shook his head, and the familiar, serious look settled back onto his face.

"Well, if there is, we should go and get 'em just the same," he said. It was, of course, the most pragmatic answer. He seemed to be a no-nonsense sort of person. "Where do you think they'd be hidin' out if there were more of 'em?"

"I don't know. I would have thought that the living dead would hang out in graveyards or a morgue or something, but…"

"We should also check the shopping mall." She gave him a weird, disbelieving look. "What? Don't give me that look."

"If you say so, Officer, sir."

"I do," he said stubbornly. Whenever you tuned in to a zombie movie, there was always a gaggle of the damn things picking their way around a Sears in a mall somewhere. It was like an immutable law or something. He reached into his pocket for his car keys, then looked down the street and frowned, sighing. The Oldsmobile that he had driven here in was one of the ones that Epsilon had demolished by accident. He wasn't terribly angry with her--she _had_ done a good thing by saving the populace of the city, and how could he possibly be angry with her for doing good?--but it was a bit bothersome, as he had just bought the car from a guy last week and was just getting used to it. Not to mention that now they had no way to get around except on foot, which would be of absolutely no use if they were trying to mop up the stragglers in an efficient manner.

"So how far away is the nearest graveyard--or morgue--or hospital--or shopping mall?" she asked.

"I bet it'll be pretty goddamn far _walking_," he said grumpily.

"I'm sorry," she apologized quietly, trying to smile sweetly. _Of course, you can't be angry with her for doing good_, he told himself, _but it's gonna be a _bitch_ trying to get around town with no car now. Again._ He sighed again. If this were a movie, there would be people crawling out of the woodwork to help out the heroes, but it wasn't a movie, so there wasn't; this was the reality of Los Angeles. Most of the people who had stopped to stare were still safely hiding away in the shops and the apartments around them. And that was just fine. They were safe, and that was both his job and Morgan's--protecting the citizenry. He looked up at the buildings around them. The people in the windows were applauding and giving a few muted cheers for the two, but nobody seemed to want to come out and give them a ride to the hospital or the mall or anywhere, even though it was safe now. Bummer.

"You know, you should just _try_ to fly," Moffat suggested. "It's a matter of urgency, efficiency, and practicality."

"But--"

"Look, I promise I won't look at anything. I will look determinedly at the ground and think solely about all of the booze I'm going to chug tonight and whether or not I managed to TiVO my stories correctly." He held up his hand in a 'scout's honor' sign. She opened her mouth to say something. She didn't even know how to begin to _try_ to fly. Not by herself, not with anybody else on her back. And how would she carry both Mr Moffat and the gun? And anyway… she was afraid of heights when she flew in airplanes. How much worse would it be without thousands of pounds of metal protecting you? "It's important, Morgan. We have to flush out any of the other… other things that might be around, and we have to be _quick_ about it."

He was right, of course. She sighed a little bit, defeated.

"The world, too," she added, sounding distracted.

"Yes," he agreed. "For the planet."

It sounded absurdly epically encouraging for something as ridiculous as just learning to fly. It would have sounded a lot cooler going before attacking a fleet of alien warships or mowing down a swarm of zombies. Or something similarly hardcore, you know. Still, he was right. She didn't like the thought of taking to the sky wearing an incredibly short skirt, but she would simply have to. They were car-less, and walking was not a practicality. Running was probably right out for her; she hadn't run _anywhere_ since sixth-grade gym class, and that had been a very long time ago. And even then, she had come in dead last in all of the races and trials--empty-handed. Were she to try to run anywhere, Mr Moffat would have had to ring the ambulance to lug her away. She switched her heavy gun to her other side and leaned against it. She would try, then. For tomorrow. She awkwardly looked at Moffat. Her gun, she could just about handle (easy enough--keep both hands on it, hold it tight, make sure it doesn't misfire). What about Mr Moffat? He certainly seemed to want to go with her--all this about "we" and "us" and "our." And obviously, he wouldn't be able to fly under his own power. This was all a bit of a puzzler. She eyed one of his hands. That would be awkward--holding an almost-stranger's hand--but that seemed the most practical choice. But how would that work? Wouldn't it rip his arm off? That would be traumatic, not to mention bad for the fellow himself. There was something wrong with the physics of it all.

Then again, she was leaning on the seven-foot barrel of a gun that materialized out of nowhere and fired apparently magical multipurpose shells that also seemed to materialize out of nowhere; they were standing in front of a crater where some zombies had once lain; and she owned a crystal that gave her the power and ability to do all of this, with no explanation at all… perhaps the laws of physics and the possible violation thereof was the least of her concerns.

She awkwardly reached out her hand, and Moffat grabbed it, squeezing it tightly in his. Her face turned a bit pink. Holding hands with a fellow who was almost a stranger... how very embarrassing. It wasn't really uncomfortable--it was sort of nice, really, his warm hands wrapped around hers--but it was a bit unfamiliar. But this was important. It was necessary. She would just have to forget the fidgetsome feeling and concentrate.

One foot up… then the other…

And they floated slowly into the air. She squeaked fearfully.

"Hey, come on," Moffat scolded, "concentrate. I don't wanna go sidewalk diving today, thanks."

_Right. Concentrate_, she thought. Up… up…

…

…

and away.

-------------------------------------------------------

Nona Ferris had barricaded herself and her children into the ladies' restroom in the mall, and she was currently sitting with them patiently in the handicapped stall. That was probably the smartest thing to do. Safest thing to do, definitely.

The four-year-old, Jenny, was busily pulling all of the toilet paper out of the rolls and piling it on the tile; six-year-old Evan was sitting in the corner playing with his toy astronauts and space shuttle. Evan loved astronauts, and was convinced he wanted to be one when he grew up, though he was rather upset about that Tom Sosa guy's freak accident. That hadn't been an easy thing to explain. Regular death was fairly easy to explain--yeah, Granny's heart just gave out, she was old, God called her number--but freak accidents out in space… especially the cables severing like that and allowing a guy to just go floating off…

Nona shook her head.

_No. Don't think about space. Don't think about it…. Just… Don't._

Presently, Jenny got tired of rolling out the toilet paper and turned her eyes to Nona.

"Mommy, I'm bored," she complained. "Can we go now?"

"No, honey," she replied simply.

"We've been in here _forever_!" the little girl whined, in that specially grating way that only small children of a certain age have. Nona heaved a heavy sigh and ground her teeth slightly. She loved her children--like all mothers did--but sometimes, Jenny could get this way. And it had been about two hours they had been in the bathroom, hiding from those… things that were crawling all over the mall. They were making an awful racket out there--scraping, screaming, howling, squelching… That was the only safe thing to do, was hide.

She could have done something else.

But she didn't want to.

She wanted to put it entirely out of her mind. To her, it didn't exist--that damn shooting-star chunk that had fallen from the sky while the family was vacationing in Arizona. They had just gone to see the Grand Canyon and spent one evening at the Lowell Observatory, and when they had walked out, a little crystalline bit of a shooting star had fallen into her hand, like the first snowflake of winter…

_No. That didn't happen_, she thought stubbornly. Best just to ignore it. It would only bring danger to her children; as a mother, her primary obligation was to keep her children safe and healthy.

So that was what she was doing.

She had barricaded them inside, shielding them against the horrors of what was outside.

The door budged slightly, and Nona stood and rocketed forward, slamming the door shut again. From outside, there were sounds of screaming and of agony.

How would she explain all this to Evan and Jenny anyway? She hadn't wanted to tell them the truth--that she just didn't know. So she had told them that it was a movie, and they were interrupting the filming, so to be polite, they had holed up in the bathroom. All mothers lied to children for their safety. It wasn't a bad thing at all, contrary to what teenagers often believe.

Nona secured the door again and went back to sitting in the open handicapped stall with Evan and Jenny. Evan was starting to look bored with his astronauts, and Jenny sat next to the toilet, frowning, arms crossed. Children had a special way of looking angry, and it never failed to make her smile. It was cute. Except right now, she was finding it extremely hard to smile. Ever since that night… so she forced a smile, feeling hollow.

"Look, honey, when we get out of here, I promise we'll go to the Build-a-bear Workshop. We'll all make our favorite animals and then you and me can have a tea party. Evan can come if he wants, too," she said.

"Can I make a panda?" Jenny asked, her face brightening immediately. "A panda _ballerina_?"

"Sure. I'll make a giraffe doctor, and Evan can make a penguin astronaut." A big shit-eating grin spread across her face, and she felt like an awful witch. The ugly truth was that deep down, she felt like they would probably all die together in the shitter here at the mall. _There was no escaping those things_. She had seen them working their way through tables and chairs and doors and lights and toys and everything when the family had first come across them in the mall. Those worms… they kept crawling…

There was one way to escape.

But she couldn't.

No.

She just couldn't.

Either way, they were fucked. Nona didn't like swearing in front of her children, but it was an ugly and awful truth. One way or another, they were going to die here in the bathroom next to Nordstrom's.

If she brought out that little crystalline piece of rock and said the magic words, she would have to fight, and she would die. She had never fought in her life, and had certainly never fought

(_zombies_)

things like that.

She knew for certain that, at the very best, the rose-colored glasses version, she would doom her children to certain death if she fought. She would have to leave them behind in the bathroom. She would have to open the door to leave. Nona could hear the things wailing and howling just beyond the door. They would be all over her within a half a second.

No.

She would rather sit here and die with her children. Like a family. She was only sad that Manny wasn't here; he had decided to sit at home and work on building Jenny's dollhouse--Jenny's birthday was coming up in two weeks, and they had decided to build her a totally awesome dollhouse and fill it up with the most beautiful dolls they could find.

Would have been five.

Then they could have died as a complete family, leaving no one behind.

Nona was pretty certain that none of them would live to see Jenny turn five and go to kindergarten. What were those funny euphemisms for death that Nona had laughed at when she was still a nurse? When death was kind of funny, and not pounding at the door? Couldn't remember. Except one of them. 'Cancel Christmas.'

Yup.

There wouldn't be a Christmas this year.

Of that, she was certain.

Unless there was a Christmas in… wherever or whatever there was after death.

Nona leaned against the wall. Jenny, obviously still bored, started tossing the unraveled paper into the toilet and flushing it, giggling with glee with each inch that went flying into the bowl. Children are generally smarter than people give them credit for, but one thing that they were always ignorant of was impending doom. That was why they would climb rickety trees and go down with the breaking branches, or squeeze into storm drains and pretend like they were Alice down the rabbit hole, or play with matches, or whatever. Some particularly sharp children understood death as a general concept, but they were totally ignorant of the real _facts_ of death and dying, and didn't fear it at all because of this ignorance. Because they didn't know.

The death-things scraped against the door. It was loud. Wood and metal were being torn away, groaning and snapping beneath their furious clawing.

Nothing to do now but wait for the worms.

-------------------------------------------------------

Sailor Epsilon huffed as she landed clumsily on the pavement. Her gun made a loud metallic 'thud!' as it clattered down and rolled slightly to the side. Moffat, however, landed much more gracefully and impressively, combat-rolling and kneeling in front of the door of the Nordstrom's. After a beat, he stood up and helped Epsilon to her feet as well. He also picked up her glasses, which had fallen from her face, and handed them to her after buffing some scratches and dust off of them with the corner of his shirt. She put them back on and picked up her gun--peculiarly, it wasn't scratched at all, even considering its hard landing against the uneven cement--looked through the glass doors of the mall, and then looked at Moffat, slightly bewildered.

"Wow."

"I'm kinda surprised, myself."

"I didn't think there really _would_ be zombies at the mall. I thought you were making a joke, quite honestly."

There hadn't been any at the nearby cemeteries, or at the morgue, or at the hospital (that had been interesting, with Moffat trying to explain why they were there and trying to not feel awkward and silly standing there, hiding behind a bush to avoid suspicion). But here they were, all over the mall. Some brave and clever bystanders had pulled cars in front of the doors of the mall to block it off--and good on them for doing so--and corralled the creatures inside for the time being. An entire mall-full of them… She wondered how many were in there. An involuntary shiver.

"You shouldn't come in with me, Mr Moffat," she said quietly. She would be okay. Epsilon know that she'd probably be okay. But she was doubtful as to his safety.

"Nonsense," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "Of course I'm coming in. I have to make sure that you're doing all right, and back you up if you can't handle it all alone." She opened her mouth to protest, but he interrupted impatiently. "No. I'm going. Just do that little magic trick again and I'll be fine." He flashed her a reassuring grin, but it didn't entirely serve its purpose; she still looked worried and doubtful. For just a moment, she hesitated. But then she waved her hand, frowning in concentration, and a soft light flickered around his body; the forcefield was surrounding him once more.

"Are you sure?" she said one more time.

"Damn straight. Come on; let's quit fuckin' about," Moffat scolded impatiently. He took out his taser and his handgun again, one in each hand; he reloaded them, then nodded at her. She smiled nervously and nodded back, following him to the doors and pushing them open. He went behind her, wanting to stay out of the way of that Pulsar Missile thing she had pulled earlier. They had agreed that it would be the best tactic; it had worked quite well previously--melting the cars and the sidewalk as it had. Just gun them down, group by group, and hope for the best. And Moffat himself would mop up the stragglers, on the chance that she missed any. He tried to push the image of the chomping face grinding itself down bloodily into the pavement out of his mind, not wanting to spend valuable time puking in the potted ficus trees.

The creatures hissed and howled, their meals having been interrupted. The mall had been torn through pretty thoroughly already. Clothing racks sprawled on the floor, electrical equipment sparking on the ground… they had eaten, or tried to eat, everything in sight. The floor was slick and largely covered in the worm-filled ichor that dripped from the creatures' sloughing flesh, the worms trying to eat their way through the floor. The forcefield worked nicely against it; it was like skating just about an inch or so above the foul stuff. Epsilon frowned in concentration again and put a forcefield over herself. Skating partners. The creatures stopped to stare at them, gurgling. Some other noise started to come out. Speech…? _Of a sort_, she thought. Not really--

"_HUNGRY_," they all wailed in unison. She jumped a bit.

They could talk. Were they still people, then? That was a bit of a sticky matter… and it bothered her a lot. She gripped her gun tightly. No. They weren't human beings anymore.

"I'm afraid I must destroy you all," she informed them. "You will only make it harder on yourselves if you resist. Please stand where you are."

"_I AM A GOD,_" a hundred voices gurgled nastily. "YOU_ WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DESTROY ME ENTIRELY, LITTLE CHILD_."

"Um. Well, I can certainly have a go," she said. _Mustn't be frightened, mustn't be frightened, mustn't be frightened_… Her mind only repeated that one short phrase for a minute or so, then it switched to something else--_I must win, I must win, I must win, I must win_…

Mocking, awful laughter arose from a multitude of grinning bloody skulls that peered out from all angles. For a second, she hesitated, terrified, until a gunshot rang out to the side. Moffat had started off on it already. Right. She had to win. Must win. For the world. For tomorrow. Always tomorrow.

She brought up the gun and aimed it carefully.

"_Pulsar Missile_!" she cried, mowing a ragged, burning path through the creatures that were shuffling ever closer to the two of them. Like a Gatling flamethrower… She rotated around as best she could, careful not to slip on the muck-covered floor, and fired it again. When she was done here, there would be nothing left of the mall but a smoking crater. If that was what it took… she ground her teeth. Yes. If that was what it took, she would destroy all of these things completely, disintegrate them into absolute nothingness. For the safety of the people.

Cacophonic jeers in the strange gurgling tones of the walking worms filled the air--hundreds of tiny screaming worm-gods. She tried her best to block them out, trying to fill her mind up with where to aim the next shot and with snatches of old Doors songs. Couldn't let that thing's horrid chattering get to her. No. Had to be a hero. Had to do this. Had to win.

It was a strangely graceful sort of dance. Moffat, on one side, mopping up the stragglers with shots from his handgun and holding off some others with the taser; Sailor Epsilon on the other, sending round after round through the crowd of hundreds. Piles of dust and bubbling, melted linoleum lie in their wake--the monsters, their food, the tile and the ceiling, all crumbled to ash after Epsilon's furious attacks. The two of them seemed to almost float across the slimy floor on the forcefields that Sailor Epsilon had cast around the two of them; that was what made it look graceful and fluid and beautiful.

Down, down, down.

The creatures' numbers were declining rapidly with each screaming blast of energy that Epsilon sent out, but she was getting tired. There were about twenty left now, and they were quickly shambling up towards them, eager to feed. They grinned awfully--perhaps recognizing a new feast. She huffed and panted, out of breath. Tired. How come Supergirl never got tired?

"_IT HAS BEEN A VERY LONG TIME SINCE I HAVE EATEN A SAILOR SOLDIER_," the dwindling number said with a terrible happiness to its collective voice. "_I WILL ENJOY FEASTING UPON YOUR FLESH AND UPON YOUR SAILOR CRYSTAL. AND THEN, I WILL SWALLOW YOUR PLANET UP LIKE AN OVERRIPE PLUM. YOU WILL BE MY MESSENGER. YOU WILL CARRY ME INTO THE WORLD, AND YOU WILL HELP ME SATE MY HUNGER_."

"No," she said tiredly.

"_YOUR TOUCH WILL BE THE DEATH OF BILLIONS_." They were crawling ever closer. Moffat hurriedly started reloading his handgun; she could see that the man's hands were shaking a bit. He didn't want to die. Neither did she. She didn't want to die. She couldn't. No--wouldn't. _Wouldn't_. "_PESTILENCE… FAMINE… IT WILL BE DELICIOUS_."

"Like hell!" Moffat barked, shooting into the shrinking group closing in on them. He was looking tired, too, but he was keeping on with it. He had to. He wasn't about to die--not here and not now--he didn't care what he had to do to prevent it. He was going to live, and those fucking ugly-ass monsters were all going to _die_, every single one of them. A set of teeth snapped, slamming uselessly against the forcefield around him; he gave a cry of disgust and took a swing at it, the field slamming hard against the creature's face, like a brick, and it went sprawling across the ground. Gurgling, growling.

"_YOUR INSOLENCE DISPLEASES ME_."

"I'm sure it does, sir," Epsilon puffed. "But… life is full of disappointments."

"Badass," Moffat complimented. Her face turned red.

"_I AM GOING TO EAT YOU BOTH ALIVE. JUST LIKE I'M DOING TO YOUR PEOPLE NOW. DO YOU KNOW HOW PAINFUL BEING EATEN ALIVE IS? I'M SURE I DON'T. I EAT. I AM NEVER EATEN. I HAVE NO PREDATORS. I SWALLOW UP MEN, WOMEN, AND CHILDREN. I DEVOUR KINGDOMS, EMPIRES, AND PLANETS. I WILL NOT--AND CANNOT--BE DEFEATED._"

"No," she repeated quietly. "I--or, rather, we--will defeat you."

"Fuckin' well told," the man agreed loudly, nodding approvingly.

There was a choking and gagging noise from the foremost of the plague-things and a glob of bloody, _living_ phlegm flew out at them. Epsilon looked disgusted and was glad that they had thought of the forcefield trick earlier. The phlegm slammed against the forcefield and splattered like a bug on a windshield. Gross.

Moffat finished reloading and shot at the shambling creatures. Ready, aim, fire…! Epsilon shut her eyes tight for a moment and then opened them again, opening fire on the advancing line. Half were reduced to dust and ash as soon as the fiery shells tore through them. Tired. Down to her very bones, she was tired. She wasn't Supergirl; she was just a pudgy girl, out of shape, and she did tire out eventually. Had to win. Had to.

"_Pulsar Missile_!"

Another ferocious strike ripped through the creatures. Mostly. It dissolved ten and a half creatures at one strike. Being a hero was awfully tiring. One-half of a creature writhed on the floor--a bloody and mangled torso and half of a head, still snapping and chewing mindlessly at the air. It gurgled wordlessly, now lacking the vocal cords needed to speak. Blood bubbled on the melted floor where it lay; it thrashed about wildly. _Why wasn't it dead yet_? The man frowned and shot at it. Both of them wanted the goddamn thing dead. Why wouldn't it die?

"Shit, if I could, I'd go stomp that fucking thing to death," he growled irritably. "One more shot, Morgan."

"Yes, sir," she agreed.

One more.

Just one more.

That was all she had the energy left for.

She aimed it downward, towards the floor where the gurgling, writhing thing lay, and fired it, a single round of dull-metal bullets striking it square, splattering the foul remnants against the checkout counter.

So tired now.

Moffat patted her shoulder gently.

"Let me try something," he said.

"Huh?"

"I wanna see if I can do it, too."

"What?"

"Gimme your gun," the man demanded impatiently. She raised an eyebrow and let him take it from her arms. It felt nice. It was heavy, and it was nice to be free of it for a moment; she almost collapsed in relief.

He positioned it just right and tried to pull the proper triggers or levers or whatever sort of mechanism it used to fire. However, he found that it refused to shoot for him. Frowning, he fruitlessly tried again; again, nothing happened. He hmphed quietly. Well, that just about ruined his Big Damn Heroes moment, didn't it? He felt let down, really.

"How the hell do you get this thing to work?" he asked.

"I--I don't know," she responded.

"Maybe it's linked up to you special or something. Can you try it just _one_ more time, Morgan?" he asked gently. "_Please_."

"I think I can _try_," she said. "But… I don't think I can promise anything."

"Just try." Of course he hoped that she would squeeze off one more disintegrative hail of gunfire and get rid of the last traces of that ugly-as-fuck band of critters. But if she couldn't, then there was fuck-all he could do about it. He would just have to try and crush it out under his forcefield-covered heel, then, since he wasn't feeling particularly tired--in fact, quite the opposite. He was jumped up on adrenaline right now, and it made him giddy. That was all. They would just have to keep trying no matter what, trying until they finished the goddamn thing off entirely.

He helped her over closer, so that she wouldn't have to cover such a long distance with the shots (perhaps that was part of the problem--having to cover such a long distance with such large shots). There were just stringy slices of flesh stuck to the wall of the elevator and the checkout counters, but they pulsed slightly as the awful life slowly evaporated, deprived of hosts. Moffat shut his eyes tightly. How utterly disgusting.

"Just one more," he repeated.

"Right. I'll try," she said faintly.

She had to kneel to shoot this time, too tired to stand and hold the gun all at the same time. Moffat stood next to her, leaning over with his hands on his knees. He tried to think of something fantastically encouraging and appropriately epic to say to her, but he couldn't think of anything. Instead, he gently patted her shoulder once more.

She mumbled something quietly and fired just one more time. It wasn't as big a lightshow as the last several times--in fact, it looked comparatively rather weak, not putting out so many rounds--but it did its job okay. A hole was blasted through the checkout area, and it dissolved the last squirming chunks of the last half-creature. The floor was covered in the dust of the speaking plague; it looked as though it might have been abandoned for decades, with the broken equipment strewn about, smoking craters in the floor, and gaping, crumbling-edged holes in the ceilings. She rested her head against the cool metal of the gun barrel, panting.

"There we go. Good girl," he said, standing up straight and scruffing her russet-brown hair. She yawned. "Tire easily, though, don't you?" He didn't think that she should be so tired. But maybe… maybe the gun used _her_ energy as its ammunition? Maybe that was where those bullets were coming from--some unseen part of her being. Soul, spirit, whatever you wanted to call it. What a creepy thought. Soylent power! Moffat wasn't really certain that she knew, or whether he actually wanted to know the answer anyway.

"I'm not Supergirl," she mumbled.

"You're super enough."

"Um. Thank you, I guess," she said awkwardly. She fidgeted, looking a bit uncomfortable all of a sudden. Wasn't every day that people complimented her that way. Or at all, really. Moffat gave a lopsided, handsome grin.

"Right. Well, I'm going to make another sweep of the place. You can sit tight here if you like, or you can come with me. Either way. I'm gonna try to see if there are any more of those things, and if there are, I'll corral 'em up."

Epsilon got to her feet, shaking, and shuffled along behind the man. This hero thing was pretty tiring. But it was a pretty good kind of tired, actually--the satisfying type that one got after extremely hard work done for a good cause. That was good. Though tired, she also felt refreshed. She had taken her chance, and felt proud for it; now she was going to be a hero. Sailor Epsilon, soldier of tomorrow, hero of the hour. She _wanted_ to be.

-------------------------------------------------------

"Mommy, it's loud," Evan complained. He had his hands clapped to his head and he was frowning.

"It'll be over in a minute," Nona tried to soothe him. The little boy grumbled disagreeably.

There had been an awful racket from downstairs somewhere--a peculiar rumbling (she was trying to figure out what it reminded her of--thunderstorms, maybe, or rushing, pounding water), regular gunfire, the howling and gurgling and some black speech. It went quiet all of a sudden. Both things disturbed her. The noise was scary, and she had spent the past half an hour trying to quiet Jenny's crying. On the other side of it, though, the sudden silence was deeply unsettling, too. It was as if someone had turned some kind of volume switch to 'mute'--as if she had gone totally deaf in under a second. Creepy.

"They're almost done with their movie, honey. We'll be out in a little bit," she said, mindful to keep up the flat-out lie she had told them hours ago.

"I wanna go make my panda ballerina," Jenny whined impatiently.

"Just be patient," Nona said.

"I don't wanna," the little girl grumbled, crossing her arms. Nona rolled her eyes. Children were great, but they could be tiring and trying at times. In fact, they often were. Mostly, it was a good tired. But sometimes, like now, it was merely nerve-grating. Still, she loved her children.

The woman stood up and made her way to the bathroom door, opening it just a crack to peer out. Nothing directly outside. She cautiously pushed the door open a little further and scanned for danger. There were a couple of those walking, mumbling things--zombies--whatever they were--down on the first floor, but their numbers were greatly reduced. Before, there had been hundreds; now, down below, there were probably about five total. The police--or the Army, or the National Guard, or whoever had made that racket--had done a good job of reducing their number. A truth rose to her mind, completely unbidden. It wasn't just an idle what-if-maybe-perhaps thought. It just suddenly came to her as a hard and ugly and inescapable truth. It was another one of… another person who had a little shooting star in her pocket… she didn't know how she knew that, but it was a true thing.

She would have to be careful to steer Evan and Jenny clear of her, then.

Nona simply didn't want them to _know_ any of that. Not about the real monsters in the world (not after she had spent a large amount of her time telling the children that monsters did _not_ exist), not about magic (another thing that she was already spending time debunking), nothing. She didn't want them to know anything about this horrible flimsy reality. No. The safe lie of suburban happiness was much better for all of them in the long run. Safer for all their collective sanity and peace as a family.

Yes.

No.

_Ugh_.

There certainly _was_ another woman downstairs in one of _those_ outfits--except where Nona's had had a pale ice-blue ribbon at the front, this younger woman had a pale-yellow ribbon, matching one that pushed the woman's russet-brown hair back away from her face. She was walking with a tall, muscular man in a brown T-shirt, and the man was carrying two handguns, while the other woman herself had an enormous machine-gun type thing in her arms. Nona frowned. Time to tell some more Blatant Lies to her children. But it was for their own good, really.

"Okay. We can go to Build-a-Bear now. But we'll have to go to the one down the street, because this one is out of pandas, okay?"

Jenny, bless her little heart, was always ready to swallow big lies pretty easily. She nodded enthusiastically and grabbed on to Mommy's hand. Evan grabbed on to her other hand and together, they walked out of the safety of the bathroom.

Down below, Sailor Epsilon looked up. She backed up a bit, trying to crane her neck to look up at the second floor. There had been a noise up there. She didn't know what it was. Survivors? Plague-things? She was very slightly less tired now; they had popped by a Starbucks in the food court and she was working her way through a second mocha Frappuccino. The caffeine and the bad taste of coffee were doing wonders. (Epsilon wasn't terribly fond of coffee, iced or hot. Something weird about the taste, really; something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. She preferred hot tea with just the right amount of sugar, a lemon slice of just the right size to squeeze into it, and just a _hint_ of mint, thank you very much.) Still dog tired, and feeling worn down to her very bones, but the Frappuccino was keeping her moving, at least.

"Did you hear that, Mr Moffat?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"Up there." Epsilon pointed at the second-floor balcony that ringed the area in which they stood. The man nodded and backed up carefully, trying to see whatever had made the noise. He held his handgun with both hands and aimed up, just in case.

"Right, you lot up there," he shouted. "Come out to where we can see you. Hands up, too." Nothing happened. Nobody advanced forward. There wasn't a sound from up there, not a whisper. A minute and a half passed, and he spoke up again. "Second chance." A small rustle came, but neither of them could tell which direction it was coming from. Still, nobody spoke up or moved into their line of sight. "Last chance. Quit fuckin' around."

"Mommy," a child whined at last, "he said a bad word."

"I know, honey, I heard."

They were talking now, but they still didn't show themselves at all. Epsilon wondered why. They weren't speaking with that gurgling, phlegmatic shout that the other plague-things had spoken with. Perhaps they weren't plague-things at all, but survivors--regular humans like Moffat and Epsilon herself. But if that were true, why weren't they coming to the railing and showing themselves as a display of peace? The gun--maybe that was it. She put the gun down and backed away from it a bit.

"We've put our guns down."

"I haven't," Moffat mumbled. She glanced at him. "What?" he whispered. "Better safe than sorry."

"Anyway, I won't do anything. You can come out okay."

"I don't want to," the grown-up woman's voice replied, with a definite sharp edge of contempt to her tone.

Moffat rolled his eyes a little.

"Look, we've destroyed most of the things that were causin' the trouble, and we're quickly rounding up the ones that are left. You're safe to come down and leave the mall now. We just want to give it a quick check-over and make sure y'all are okay--no plague-sores or bumps on the head or nothin'," he said.

There was a very long and tense pause.

"Evan, you stay here and watch Jenny. Mommy's going down to talk to the man." Finally, progress--an absolutely gorgeous African-American woman descended the stairs, arms folded, looking very cross. She shot a nasty look at Sailor Epsilon, who frowned in confusion; she wondered if she had wronged this woman in some way, and tried to think of how, and how she could fix it if she was. Epsilon didn't like being on anyone's bad side, even if they were just totally random strangers. It drove her up the wall.

"I don't want my children to see _her_," the beautiful woman said plainly, her voice lowered so that the kids couldn't hear.

"Why not?" Moffat inquired.

"Because…" She frowned. "Because I don't want them to know. They don't need to know about all of this. Not a word. I haven't breathed a word about it to them since that night at the observatory. I'll take it to the grave with me."

"What?" Epsilon asked, miffed.

"The shooting stars. The crystals. I don't want them to know," the older woman repeated.

"You mean you have one, too? Small world." Epsilon was trying to be friendly, but her tone was awkward and nervous.

"No. I mean, yes. But I don't want it. I've thrown it out before and it keeps coming back. I don't want the damn thing; I don't want _your_ kind of life. I have far, far more important things to tend to; you obviously haven't got anything like as important," she explained. _How very, very rude_! the younger woman thought indignantly. "I just want to go back home and raise my children in peace, with none of this… this _shit_ interfering. I don't want them to see any of it." The officer and the sailor soldier exchanged glances. If that was the only way they would leave… Moffat exhaled sharply.

"Go and hide, Morgan," he said. She opened her mouth to protest, and he nudged her a little. "They won't leave and get to safety unless _you_ leave, for whatever peculiar reasons she offers."

"And it's important to let them by to safety," she sighed resignedly. The girl carefully picked her way to a nearby store and crouched out of sight behind a wide, mangled rack of chewed-up greeting cards. This felt damn silly. All kinds of damn silly. If that other woman was a sailor-girl, too, why wouldn't she fight for her children? Morgan didn't like or want children herself, so perhaps she didn't understand it clearly; still, she thought that was part of a mother's sacred duty, was fighting to protect her children no matter what. It was a frequent occurrence in nature--mama bears and lionesses and such--and you saw it all over movies and books, too. And she had been awfully rude. While she could certainly _try_ to understand the other lady's point of view, there was no call at all for being rude to strangers. It bothered her that the other woman was miffed with her for no real, honest, reasonable reason--at least, it felt like that to her.

It was, of course, true that you couldn't have everybody like you all of the time--and she was definitely used to it, really--but at least most of the time, people were content to have something sort of resembling actual reasons for disliking each other, like 'you're a lousy cheapskate,' or 'you cheated me out of something I deserve,' or 'I dislike your penchant for off-color jokes,' or even 'your face is stupid.' That Sailor Epsilon happened to be a girl in a frilly Halloween outfit and happened to be standing around the mall seemed to be a sort of flimsy reason to dislike her or be angry with her, especially because she was trying to be good and heroic and trying her best.

She didn't understand it at all, really, even though she was really trying her hardest to do so. She just couldn't wrap her mind around all this. It bothered her more than it should have, perhaps; it couldn't really be helped, Morgan was just a naturally anxious sort of person, was all. When there was a bee in her bonnet, it instantly multiplied into a roaring swarm of them and ate at her mind until she found some other worry to pile on top of it, culminating in the mini-breakdown of a few weeks ago, when she had made a slightly-wavering resolution to be a good girl and be a hero again, because the disappearing people on the vanishing bus still ate at her. But now, she had other, more pressing things to worry about. More things would come soon. Such was life--take it or leave it.

Epsilon peeked out of the window and saw that the woman and her children were picking their way out towards the door. Going, going--

A blade of violet energy swung out from the shadows by the door and slashed through the small family on their way to safety. The youngest child dropped to the ground immediately and did not move again, a broken body in a growing pool of blood. The mother grabbed at her own stomach, pressing against it, trying to keep a thick rope of intestine inside of her body. She seemed to be scrambling for some sparkling thing that peeped out of her expensive purse, fumbling it out onto the ground. It glinted in the soft sunlight streaming through the dusty air by the doors; there was a soft flash of blue light, and another swing of the violet blade of energy.

Sailor Epsilon clumsily lurched out of her hiding place and scrambled towards the doors, gun at the ready. Was this Miss Sigma's doing? She had seen that attack in use when they were fighting the shadow-thing together the last time. If it was Miss Sigma, why was she trying to kill the unfortunate woman? Her gray eyes darted around furiously, trying to find Sigma or the man in the leather jacket that always accompanied her, so that she could stop them. Maybe they were confused as to whether the small family were plague-things or not. Sailor Epsilon waved a hand and created a forcefield over the other woman, who was gagging up blood. She knew first aid, and Mr Moffat probably did, too. Mr Moffat could tend to her and call the paramedics while Epsilon went looking for Sigma to try and correct the mistake.

There was nobody in the shadows.

She walked forward cautiously.

"Miss Sigma?" she called uncertainly.

"Hmph!" Nobody else could be seen anywhere at all, but there had been a definite sound, floating in from somewhere or another…

"Um. Miss Sigma… These people aren't infected. You needn't have slashed them up like that." She was simply calling in every direction, as she didn't see Sailor Sigma around. But there was a definite _presence_. Bit unsettling, that was. Like walking through a haunted house and feeling a phantom settling over you comfortably…

Behind Epsilon, she flickered into existence, as if a veil had been lifted to reveal her. She was wobbling a bit on her feet, as if her backside were hurting something smart, and there was a bit of a strange glow about her, but the glow disturbed Epsilon; she wasn't sure why. Sigma--and her master as well--stood close to the bodies of the young family--closest to the half-transformed sailor-woman, the mother. Her uniform was similar to the ones that Epsilon and Sigma wore, except that the ribbon on her chest was a beautiful ice-blue color; it seemed that she had stopped midway through transforming into the costume, and she lay there, passed out (_dead_?) on the crumbling floor.

"She's doing a _fine_ job," the man in the leather jacket said sunnily. "Your move."

Moffat fired his taser at them--aiming more towards the man--but the dart seemed to loop back in on itself and swerve deliberately to avoid hitting him. It flopped uselessly to the ground. At the same time, Epsilon fired a volley of shining shells at the two of them, hoping to distract them for just the right amount of time. The bullets tore through the man's torso--drawing a gasp of fear and worry from Epsilon--but he shrugged it off as if it were a mere gnat-bite. He adjusted his jacket and the flesh that had been burned down--enough to expose his peculiarly slimy, springy yellow ribs to the air--formed back on with a soft, comical squelching noise. Moffat and Sailor Epsilon looked at each other, panic written across their faces very clearly.

"Disappointing," he said cheerfully. "Our move, Sigma. What will you do?"

"I'll take her out of play," she said, smiling shyly at him and indicating the woman lying on the floor; her breathing was extremely labored. He scruffed her dirty-blond hair.

"Good girl." For a moment, Epsilon felt more confident. She had put a forcefield over the dark-skinned woman, so she would be a bit safer. "Oh. You might need this. It can pierce through forcefields," he added. He waggled his fingers and a long black lance appeared in his hands. It was larger than any of the people standing in the area, even Moffat. Sailor Sigma took it and smiled at her master, though she had a hard time lifting it up. It was heavy, and she still looked _injured_ somehow.

"Wh--what--" the brown-haired girl stammered. How did he know? How had he known? What would they do now? _Think, Morgan, think_! she told herself. _The Pulsar Missile one. Try that. Just try to aim it at the guy and not the mom or her kids… though I suppose we don't have to worry about the little girl anymore_, her mind added grimly. She lifted up the gun again, aiming just towards the man in the leather jacket, and concentrated hard. "_Pulsar Missile!_"

_The bastard batted it away as if someone had tossed a pebble at him._

Fuckin' shit, man. Moffat ground his teeth, trying hard to keep his composure, trying to think of some way to salvage this--to protect and serve. He didn't have any powers; he just had the taser (which hadn't worked) and a handgun that was completely out of ammo at this point. Shit, Morgan wasn't even doing all that well, and she did have superpowers, and a gun that had disintegrated several hundred fuckin' zombies within the space of six hours. What the hell was this guy made out of? He remembered what he had told the girl earlier--his suspicion that the curly-haired bastard was the supervillain. That seemed pretty goddamn obvious now. The man ran his hands through his hair, frantic. He needed a cigarette. A whole fuckin' carton's worth of cigarettes, and an entire bottle of Jack Daniels.

He didn't know what to do.

Moffat wished he had his entire belt with him--so that he could at least jump on the man and beat him senseless with the truncheon or take out an eye with his multitool something. He never felt this viciously desperate or desperately vicious before in his entire life, but he felt it was certainly called for. Neither of these people were human, and they were obviously threatening and obviously extremely powerful. They obviously thought nothing of slaughtering people, and they thought it was a fun little game.

If it had been a pair of normal crooks--your average, garden-variety axe-murderers--he would have tackled them and taken them down, cuffed them, and took them to be dealt with in a court of law, the way it _should_ have been. He was confident that the law worked for such people.

But these people… no. Not people. They weren't even that. They were something else entirely.

Protect and serve. Of course that was what he _wanted_ to do. But he didn't know _how_ right now. He looked towards Sailor Epsilon, who seemed to have thought of something; for that, he was grateful. He'd have to buy her a hell of a lot of greasy concession stand cheeseburgers tomorrow. Providing, of course, that both of them were still alive at the time. _Ask me tomorrow! For then I shall be a grave man_. What was that from? Moffat tried to remember, and only recalled that it was from some Shakespeare bit or another. Whatever. He hadn't been that good in English as a student.

Sailor Sigma finally raised the lance, having gotten accustomed to its weight--and Sailor Epsilon blasted it out of her hands. The sparkling shells ate away at Sigma's hands and forearms, and Epsilon covered her hand, disgusted and shocked. "Oh--Miss Sigma--I'm so sorry, Miss Sigma! I didn't mean to--oh, my--" she stammered, terrified and sorry. The force of the blast launched the lance into the ceiling, where it stuck fast in a dead neon sign. Sparks chattered and sputtered nervously as they flew to the ground. Sigma detachedly looked at her arms and then waved them in the air. Black material wove itself into existence, forming armor-like scales and long, sharp claws. She smiled, but her master snarled, and the most repulsively ugly look that both Moffat and Epsilon had ever seen in their lives crossed his face. For a moment, there wasn't a handsome man's face above the collar of his jacket at all, but a horribly bizarre _thing_ that didn't seem to occupy the correct amount of dimensions; it seemed to spill over into other places that shouldn't have been. It gave Moffat a splitting headache before he turned away, and Epsilon had to quickly look down at her tennis shoes and shut her eyes tightly. Neither of them could have explained what, exactly, that _thing_ looked like, except that there was something about it that was irredeemably strange and purely malevolent and utterly _wrong_ on all possible levels, and several impossible ones as well. Then his face became handsome and calm again.

"Well-played, Sailor Epsilon." He smiled and gave her some polite, but sarcastic applause. She felt her skin crawling, and she had to struggle to keep her own face calm, instead of breaking down into tears, or screaming until she had no voice left. Was such a pleasantly sultry voice really coming from such a horribly _wrong_ creature? What on Earth had that been…? "Sig, I do believe it's our move again." His large hand glided over the pale skin of Sailor Sigma's upper arm, and he put his head on her shoulder, speaking to her in a sultry stage whisper. "What are you going to do?" Sigma gazed at her new arms, her sharp claws, a smile curling onto her face. It would have been a pretty smile, were it not so vacant.

"I'm going to take _both_ of them out of play," she said. Her voice was soft and calm, possessed of a soft edge of cheerfulness. Moffat wondered if she had just seen the disgusting abomination that had briefly revealed itself as the other guy's real face. On second thought, he didn't really want to know, if she was still so keen on being touched by the goddamn thing. And what about her arms? Did she not notice the too-wide, inhuman new hands that she had just grown? How revolting.

"There's my girl." A tongue that was too long and too red dashed out from between the man's full, pouting lips and traced a path from Sigma's collarbone and up to her earlobe. Epsilon frowned. She seemed to be frowning far more than usual today.

"How disgusting," she murmured. She disapproved of this level of PDA between normal humans--but between Miss Sigma and that thing… it was the stuff that nightmares were made of. She tried not to let her mind wander much further, forcing it to stop in its tracks at 'how rude and how disgusting!' right where it was.

"Oh, master--Mr Fairchild--" Sailor Sigma stood on tiptoe and whispered something inaudible into the handsome man's ear. Epsilon strained to hear, but failed. Mr Fairchild nodded approvingly.

"You're right. That's a very good idea."

In a flash of violet light, the two of them disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a soft smell of sulfur. Moffat angrily kicked at a chunk of rubble, sending it sailing across the broken floor, then reached in his jeans pocket and grabbed his cellphone. He dialed 911 and managed to calm his furious panting before speaking to the dispatcher. Meanwhile, Epsilon had jogged into a clothing store and returned with a few shirts. She had torn them to shreds, then knelt down and waved her hand, so that the forcefield over the half-transformed woman disappeared. The man watched as she rubbed her gloved hands together and held them over the gaping gash through which the unfortunate woman's entrails had crept. She coughed; she was still alive, but just barely. A soft glow of yellow light came from Epsilon's hands, and some of the gash started to knit itself back together. With the shredded shirts, she was trying to create some kind of temporary occlusive dressing--trying to remember her first aid. Cellophane would have worked better, but they didn't have any on hand.

Fortunately, the hospital wasn't far away, and the paramedics were there in about five minutes. They eyed the destruction suspiciously, then knelt down to tend to the woman. The children were already dead. One of the paramedics shook her head sadly as she brought out the gurney to load the half-transformed woman on. None of the paramedics asked any questions about anything; they simply tended to their duty of caring for the patient first and foremost. Epsilon fretted, wondering if they would be taken in for questioning or thrown into jail by the police. For now, though, the paramedics were silent, ignoring the strange woman in the silly costume with the enormous gun, the ruins around them… they had to care for the patients first. They loaded up the woman into their ambulance, strapped the dead children onto covered stretchers, and sped away, sirens screaming into the fading sunset. Epsilon blinked after them.

"That was all kinds of fucked up," Moffat stated simply. She nodded, agreeing. He brought out his pack of cigarettes and lit one, taking one long drag off of it. Beauty. It calmed him immensely. Took the edge off, like. Now if he could find a place with some good whiskey, he'd go home, run a bubble bath, and he'd be right in business. He reached out with one hand and squeezed Sailor Epsilon's shoulder. She looked faint and terrified again. "That was all kinds of fucked up. But… you did a good job." She smiled distantly and weakly.

"Um. Thanks."

"Think you're gonna be okay?"

"I don't know."

"Fair enough." He shrugged and took another puff of his cigarette. It was definitely time for a hot bubble bath. Or maybe… He shuffled his foot across the crumbling floor. "D'ya still want to go to the beach? It's gettin' late, but…" There was a long pause, and Sailor Epsilon stared at the ground. Bloody angel figures were spread into the dust and rubble, where two dead bodies had been just moments before. After this long, blank pause, she nodded slowly.

That would be nice. A trip to the beach. It would be relaxing. Calming. Cleansing. She needed it badly. Mr Moffat had his cigarettes, but she had no such thing to relax her. The beach would do quite nicely to calm her frayed nerves. A beach picnic with… someone who was sort of a friend.

But… there… there was hardly need to be _too_ torn up, was there?

She _had_ done well. Mr Moffat had said so, and for once in her life, she actually believed someone who said that she had genuinely done good. She was good enough for now. She had destroyed the walking plague-god, even if she had worn herself out completely in the process (she was now leaning heavily against her gun to support herself). In doing so… she had saved people, hadn't she? Even though she had lost a little bit… those kids… She chewed an index fingernail. The plague-god was gone… she had destroyed it, the bodies that it used as its multitude of hosts. The world was safe from the white horseman for now. Mr Moffat and herself had seen to it. And maybe-maybe-not she had at least prolonged the blue-ribboned sailor-woman's life. And--Mr Fairchild, was that what Miss Sigma had called him?--he and Miss Sigma had gone away.

Yes. That felt nice. She had had a successful day--a net gain. A good day. Today was a good day.

Perhaps tomorrow, she could do just as much good. No. Tomorrow, she could be better. Stronger. Braver. More effective.

She transformed back into her regular clothes, tired of holding the heavy gun, and Moffat put a strong arm around her shoulders to help support her against him. She squeaked awkwardly, her face coloring, but half-reluctantly accepted his assistance as they made their way towards the street again, narrowly avoiding questioning from the police arriving on the other side of the mall.

Yes… overall, today was a good day. Bad things had happened. Numerous bad things, certainly. But together, they had _made_ it a good day; they had _saved_ the day.

Like heroes.

That was a good thing.

She wanted to be a hero.

The only bad thing now was that they would be taking the bus to the beach. But hey, they were going to the beach, and that would be nice.


	6. Faces from the Ancient Gallery

_**Faces from the Ancient Gallery**_

Fairchild is not a man.

Nobody is quite sure _what_ he is, and it's entirely possible that he's not entirely sure, either. All he knows is that he's alive, that life is for living, and that he is living his.

If you were to ask him about his past, he would answer with a series of fascinating lies. You would probably believe them, the way that you believe the sun will come up tomorrow morning.

He doesn't recall having a childhood. You could forgive him this. After all, he _is_ impossibly ancient. You wouldn't be able to tell by simply looking at him, of course; the human skin that he wears in his travels around this world is spellbindingly handsome.

As far as he knows, though, he was not so much _born_ as he just _congealed_. He simply walked out of the darkness one day--before there was such a thing as days or nights--and _was_.

He has no mother and no father.

He has no planet to which he swears allegiance, no star system that he calls his home.

He is not Chaos.

He is not Destruction.

He is not Death.

No.

These things follow in his wake, wherever he goes. But he isn't an anthropomorphic personification, say, or a creature born of a bleak, lonely destiny. Nothing like that at all. He simply _is_, and he _is_ a creature with no reason for being, no reason at all. Most creatures didn't--he had found this out in his travels across the universe, during his long walks in the dark between stars--but liked to tell themselves that they did--from the bacteria-folk crawling in the entrails of beautiful creatures on lush, jungle-covered asteroids, all the way up to the silly little girls in little frilly skirts who fancied themselves the saviors of worlds, who would happily pretend that their idiot leader was worth dying for, or that the planets on which they lived were special and worth protecting.

He found this funny--that creatures thought that there were things worth dying for. He found that once you gave somebody a purpose, any purpose at all, they would happily, proudly march their way forth to destruction and death.

So he hadn't bothered finding himself a purpose.

Rather, he told other creatures what their purpose was, and he would steady them, positioning them on a long and merry death-march.

He had no ambitions for conquest or for power--he already had enough power for his tastes. No, he just wanted to have himself some fun.

Sometimes he would create a body and take their native shape. He would mingle amongst them, speak to them. He would tell them what they wanted to hear, and he would give them a face and a voice--false ones, a grim and dark parody. And he would give them exactly what they wanted. Of course they were never happy. There is an old proverb--"the hearts of the wicked never rest easily"--but the opposite is actually far more true. The hearts of the righteous--or self-righteous, as the case may be, and often is--are never restful at all. That was why they were pretty damn easy to manipulate. The wicked are too paranoid and jealous to accept that sort of manipulation, and won't stand for it. But people who are convinced that their cause is good and right… they would eagerly gobble up any ugly lie you told them, no matter how great that lie was. They were happy to be led around by their noses by a charming leader with a handsome face and passionate speech. If he said 'jump,' they would only ask how high. If he said 'we must assassinate the king,' they would go, 'poison, dagger, or gun?' If he said 'those people over there are looking at us funny and I think they mean to cut our throats before nightfall,' they would panic, and go, 'I think we should cut their throats and steal their treasures first!' Beauty. Any idiot could do it; it just took a little bit of ingenuity.

Sometimes he took a different route.

Sometimes he would merely carve his target's 'conscience' out, by means of a type of psychic lobotomy, and take its place as one of those famous Voices. They would never, ever know what happened. Not in life, not in death. Which was part of the fun. They would be disturbed by it, certainly, but they wouldn't know what had happened; they would stand over the broken and bloodied bodies of the people they loved the most and wonder why they had done it, without being able to figure it out at all (he jammed those thought patterns quite easily). They would tear themselves apart--figuratively and literally--and with their dying gasps and last thoughts, they would wonder why. They would ask the thing that they thought of as themselves, and he would not answer them, save with a cold, grim, amused silence. That misery and pain, that self-loathing, that hatred and fury… he found it fuckin' hilarious. Great fun.

And once he had discovered the secret of Sailor Crystals and Sailor Power… well! That had been a millennium to remember, hadn't it? He looked back upon it fondly.

The first sailor soldier that he had run into had been one Sailor Merope. She had been exceedingly easy; she was a woman in love. Your typical fairy-story bullshit, really--rebellious princess wanting to marry for love and not for position or power. Arranged marriage. Stable boy on the side. Her sisters had all been married off into their correct positions, so there was an unbelievable amount of pressure on Sailor Merope, the youngest. He had raked his icy claws through her brain, tearing out her rational conscience and tossing it aside, and he had comfortably taken up a spot there, speaking in the voice of her beloved; he would make her hear her beloved begging for an eternity together. Lies, lies, lies, all easily swallowed up by the one he fed them to. With only the tiniest of nudges, she had decided to kill her sisters and her father in order to be together with her beloved for eternity, and so she had transformed with the magic words--"Merope Star Power, Make Up!"

He had never before experienced such power, such delicious, unadulterated malice--though she (and many others before and after) would have called it "purpose." It had sent him into a month-long laughing fit. Her first sister, she had incinerated with star-fire. The next, she had fought in armed combat, and plunged a spear through the sister's ears. So on and so forth, until the last one stood, cowering before Sailor Merope and begging for her life, even offering up her child's life instead, desperate for her own to continue, even in the outfit of the supposedly brave and honorable soldiers of the universe. He had sat on the woman's brain with a heavy pressure, and, in a false, borrowed voice, whispered desperate-sounding deceits of love and longing. Her hesitation had ended there, and she had strangled the final sister with her bare hands. After that, he had slipped out of her mind and stood in the corner, invisible, but shaking with silent laughter, as the realization of what she had just done sank in.

And after that, she had snapped, with one final feral howl, and killed every living thing in the Pleiades group. She would have spread on to the entire Taurus constellation, had she not been stopped by one Sailor North Star, a crusty, seasoned older woman and an excellent soldier. Sailor Merope had crippled North Star for life, crushing her legs underneath an enormous boulder, but North Star had managed to send a bolt of blue electromagnetic energy directly through Merope's eyes, killing the mad soldier instantly. Then she'd passed out, alone in a desolate system of ruins. At that point, he had left, still shaking with laughter. A big system, full of life, decimated in the space of an afternoon. So much for the power of love. He was inclined to suspect, really, that if there was such a thing as the power of love, it had, in fact, wound up destroying the people of the Taurean system.

So he had tooled around and had his fun. Soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, queen, prince, man, woman, child, tentacle monster, bacteria-man, stonefolk. It didn't matter to him. They all provided equally good sport. Some were just more creative than others.

For the past couple of millennia, he'd been hanging around in the general vicinity of the Sol system. There were numerous backwater hick planets out here, filled with interestingly fucking stupid life-forms.

What fun he had had there!

He had joined in the wars among the bacteria-folk in the Sirian systems, inciting them to overthrow the viral queens (citing injustice in the balance of power--and managing to _mask_ the fact that they _needed_ the viral queens in order to ensure the propagation and survival of the bacteria-folk) and kill the virus Sailor Soldier that had served them so well, protecting them against the protozoa-people in the previous bloody little war. Then, when he had purposefully let the truth slip, the common folk--who were all that remained--turned on one another in a panic and started slaughtering one another.

He had simply appeared on the planet Cykranosh--which, if he recalled it right, was now called Saturn, and had been since taken over by humanoids. But at the time, it had been Cykranosh. The people--billions of tiny metal spider-gods, called by the name 'Atlach-Nacha'--lived on the sparkling, opalescent core. Their kingdom was quiet and small and peaceful, unusual for the size of the gas-giant planet. It had been quiet and small and peaceful, anyway, until he'd gotten his eight spindly legs into it. The spider-gods had tangled themselves up into an impossible knot in the midst of their war and begged him to give them all the mercy of death. He'd watched them for weeks, crouched on his horrible misshapen haunches on the ground, enjoying the tiny agonized screams they offered him. They were starving and thirsting and dying, screaming and panicking and crying. He had let them die eventually, as they failed to hold his interest any longer. Most of them, anyway. But he had kept a breeding pair in a jar, just in case he wanted to use them for anything in the future. Four million years later, he had brought them out of the dust and dark and let them burrow into a man's head, weaving webs of his nightmares and visions, breeding and eventually bursting free for a short while.

But his favorite had been a trip to a silvery moon that orbited an ugly blue planet.

It had been the first time he'd worn a human's skin. He found it itchy, tight, and uncomfortable--in fact, he still did. That was why he sometimes simply walked Out of it--for a breath of fresh air. But he'd gotten used to it after awhile.

The people of the moon, who wore these skins, thought they were awfully important and advanced. They would constantly bleat and bitch about their _art_ and _culture_, as if that were some sort of great accomplishment. Any halfwitted beast could do that kind of shit. Indeed, most of them did.

This had been another affair over such a stupid thing as a little lump of glass with magic powers. The people of the Sol system acted like their very existence depended on it. So he had decided to fuck with them a little bit.

Hilarity ensued.

He had stolen it--child's play, really; the people of the moon were the haughty, snotty sort of people who thought that animal weaknesses like greed and desire for power were _beneath them_ somehow, the sort who fancied that they were living in some beauteous utopia, so they tried to operate on the honor system. Even the castle and the queen. He had duplicated himself on a temporary basis; half of him went to swipe the queen's Silver Crystal, and half of him went to speak to a group of peasants (riddle me this: if it's as utopian as they think it is, why are there still peasants milling about at the bottom of the pit? It was fun to watch them, like ants in a farm; the supposedly highly-evolved moon-people would simply go about pretending they lived in a utopian fairy-land and ignore every ugly or unpleasant thing, shoved it over onto the dark side of the moon, and the peasants were livid; if given the slightest chance, just the tiniest little nudge, the peasants would tear the moon kingdom apart) about inciting a riot and then a revolution in the afternoon. Both were damn easy, of course.

In the former case, he had simply slid into the crystal castle--wearing the human skin, the human skin covered in a manservant's clothing--popped into the queen's bedroom, and swiped the crystal from her bedside table. You would have thought they would have such an 'important' thing at least padlocked up somewhere, or maybe _hidden_, but no--the crystal was merely lying on the sleeping queen's nightstand. So he had pocketed it and walked back out and waited for the riots and the revolution to begin, sitting on a green wicker chair outside of a little bar on the high street.

He had done a number of things to ensure the fiery, bloody demise of the moon kingdom.

First, he had researched a little into the troubles between the Earth Kingdom and the people of the moon. They were in the middle of a cold war, neither one wanting to make the first move, but constantly at each other's throats anyway. The reasons why didn't matter to him. There was massive unrest between the two realms, though, and that was what had attracted him. It was at that time that he had gotten the idea of stoking the fire and setting them into a real war, a bloody and miserable one, perhaps the final one for their worlds (but if not, that was fine, too, because he would be back anyway).

Second, he had stirred Queen Metallia. She was but a weak little pissant of the Night-Kind, codependent on humans for sustenance. But humans were weak little pissant creatures themselves, so she would do just fine. He had also sent her a vessel, an easily-manipulated idiot of a woman named Beryl. And so, Queen Metallia claimed, the Dark Kingdom would rise again. Not fuckin' likely, but what did he care? It would be more than enough to get an extinction war rising.

Third, he had spoken charismatically and convincingly to the downtrodden peasantry of both the Earth and the moon. He didn't honestly give a shit about their well-being or equality; in fact, he could not possibly have given _less_ of a shit, and quite liked that they were so miserable. But if there was more fun to be had out of fucking with them, he was going to have that fun, even if he had to work for it first.

Fourth, he had stolen the crystal. The people of the moon had jumped to the conclusion that he had wanted them to jump to--that the sage Beryl had stolen it for Earth's people--and so they had attacked one another viciously, and neither the queen nor her sailor soldiers could stop it, no matter how hard they had tried. Failure was the only option. He'd seen to that. Then he'd slipped back in and returned the crystal to the queen just a moment too late, after her daughter, the princess, had been slaughtered mercilessly by Beryl.

"Bit of bad luck, that," he had said to her cheerfully, the only other living thing left among the ruins of the silver kingdom, and he had flashed her his famous crocodile-grin. He was enjoying every passing second of this. Two entire kingdoms wiped out in the space of an afternoon. And after this, an entire solar system devoid of life, with the once-grand kingdoms of the planets crumbling into the dust of the cosmos. There would be life again someday. Life had an annoying habit of, you know, living. It came back a lot, no matter what you did to snuff it out entirely. Bonus rounds in the game of stars. That was all they were. But no matter how grand the kingdoms of the Sol system had once been, they would never reclaim that glory again, never have the same power or majesty. History taught its lessons, after all.

She had only answered his sunny remark with tremulous weeping, curled up on the crumbling stone floor of the temple.

He had spent several years basking in the glory of what he had done that time.

And then, he had simply moved on for a thousand or a million or so years, all over the infinite amount of galaxies in the ever-expanding universe.

Genocide here, civil war there, strife and horror and destruction and misery everywhere else. He encouraged it, took an active part in creating it or keeping it going. He was the one who made sure that the daggers were sticking out of the proper spines, that the dogs of war, the dogs of chaos and ruin, ate everything in sight and pissed fire and blood on the rest.

Kept him entertained. Certainly put a smile on his face.

There's not much else to do, really, when you've lived for billions of years, with your death nowhere to be seen--when you're almost entirely unkillable--it's all you can do to keep yourself amused, and he had found the games that pleased him the most.

It didn't matter what the rules were.

He had been playing his game for billions of years--the game called havoc--and this was a game that would go on for eternity, for as long as there were stars, for as long as there was life.

No, not even those silly little girls in miniskirts could stop him.

They had tried several times already.

And they had lost.

So he was confident that they would go on losing. They would rise up against him, one by one, and he would stomp them all down into their proper place, under his heel. They could bleat on about the greatness of their princesses and the power of love and the atonement that friendship offered all they wanted, but they was all lies, told in quivering voices to terrified young women who had been unlucky enough to be granted Sailor Crystals and Sailor Power.

He enjoyed the sounds of their worlds shattering, sending reality shoving rudely into their fragile minds full of silly delusions.

Fairchild is not a man.

Fairchild is complete and utter madness.


	7. Screaming in the Dark

_**Screaming in the Dark**_

Humans have great capacities for fear. If it weren't for hard-wired survival instincts, we would all be reduced to quivering, frightened white worms in a cave somewhere, afraid of the sunlight, afraid to move, afraid to be hurt--afraid of existing and living life. If you can imagine it, somebody somewhere in the world is horrified by the concept, and somebody else has thoughtfully given this person's fear an intellectual-sounding Greek name.

But fears and phobias are actually quite funny things when you get down to it.

First of all, there's the curiously specific phobias--like arachibutyrophobia, the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one's mouth (which, incidentally, is not a true DSM-IV-listed phobia, but something mentioned in a Modesty Blaise novel back in 1985 and then passed around endlessly in email chains--but there's probably somebody out there who has a genuine terror of just such a thing happening; you never know, really)--or paraskavedekatriaphobia, the fear of the date of Friday the thirteenth (which is only bad luck if you're one of the Knights Templar, or an idiotic teenager in a slasher film).

Then there's the ones that are just so out-there that you have to wonder if someone was having a jolly good joke when writing the psychiatric diagnostic manuals--like anthophobia (the fear of flowers), or trichophobia (the fear of hair), or omphalophobia (the fear of navels), or pteronophobia (the fear of feathers or being tickled by such).

Then there's the way different people fear different things.

For instance:

Sigmund Freud, the great psychologist, was afraid of ferns.

Billy Bob Thornton, the actor, is an admitted chromophobe--afraid of bright colors.

Napoleon Bonaparte, once the emperor of France, was terrified of cats.

Andre Agassi, the tennis pro, is frightened of spiders.

I, the writer, suffer aichmophobia.

So on and so forth.

You can be utterly _terrified _of something--something that's so terrifying that you would sooner claw your own eyes out before you had to deal with it--and it's pretty well guaranteed that someone else will find it hilarious or something otherwise not worth being afraid of. For instance, you'll confide in your friend, 'You know, clowns freak me right the fuck out. There's something about them that just ain't right.' Your friend will, of course, laugh at you and go, 'There's nothing at all scary about clowns! Now, you want something scary, you look at airplanes.' Your friend will shudder at the thought, and you will laugh and say that flying in an airplane is one of the coolest things you've ever done, and will try to soothe him with patently unsoothing things like 'it's as if you're floating with angels!'

But both of them would be right.

Airplanes and clowns and spiders--that's nothing to be afraid of. It's silly, really.

There are other things that everybody in the world is afraid of, whether they admit it or not; these are the _sensible_ things to fear--the _real_ things.

Horsemen riding forth--plague. War. Hunger. Death.

Destruction.

Loneliness.

Pain.

Darkness. Silence. The unknown.

Things that lie beyond--beneath--around, breathing and whispering heavily. Gods, demons, ghosts, spirits--whatever you'd like to call them, they're there. Most of the time, we're just imagining their ugly black speech as the words slither into our brains and crawl around awhile. Sometimes, though, the real things will actually notice our presence and decide to bat one of us around a bit, the way a cat will play with a dying, gasping mouse before eating it up.

Thankfully, this last bit is pretty rare--though it's been starting to become more common thanks to a certain dark man. It's still something to be afraid of, certainly, but it's less worrisome than the other things.

Because you will suffer pain in your life. You will be alone in the dark, you will have some time in your life when everything around you is absolutely silent--your friends, your family, your mind itself. You will have your heart broken multiple times by multiple people. You will be hungry. You will contract diseases and maladies, you will sustain injuries. You will cry and you will scream and you will _wish_ that you were dead and rotting in the ground already. Because life can be an awful and horrifying thing sometimes. It's completely inescapable for any being on any planet.

Eventually, though, the gentleman in the black robe _will_ take you away, and he will give you the final mercy of his kiss and touch, and you won't have to be afraid anymore.

Because someday, you _will_ die.

Pleasant dreams.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

He sat on the edge of the bed, leaning back with one hand supporting him, and he was stroking Sigma's hair with the other, curling a dirty-blond lock of her hair around his long, thin fingers. It wasn't due to any particular affection or eagerness to accept the favors she was giving him; no, he hardly cared about that. It was just another way to see her squirming. Sigma was afraid and hesitant of such lascivious activities, but she would eagerly supply these sorts of favors, desperate as she was to please and impress her master.

Her progress was coming along nicely--in more ways than one, mind you. While Sailor Epsilon dreamed of warm darkness ringed by silver and golden stars, and of a soft, beautifully alien song, Sailor Sigma dreamed of a howling, empty blackness, cold and bereft of any being. She dreamt of oblivion, and she would whimper and whine and twitch in her sleep.

He wouldn't rush it, of course. But he would watch with cruel interest as she clawed and scratched at her newly-regenerated hands. They wouldn't change back to pale, creamy human skin, no matter what she did, no matter what magic words she said--whether she was transformed into Sigma or just wandering around as regular old Laurie. They remained black and scaly, with long, knife-like claws at the ends of them; they were large, about the size of tennis rackets. Epsilon hadn't meant to amputate Sigma's hands, and was still pretty horrified that she had done so.

The game had taken an interesting twist.

Still, Sigma had taken a player out of the game, and that was good. Another star flickering its last and crumbling into the dust of ages--lost forever in the blink of an eye. He had seen to that this morning; he had gone Out and torn out all of the tubes and lines connecting Nona Ferris to this world. Just as the doctors saw that she was starting to improve, starting to have hope for her condition and hope for her recovery after that quick, deft surgery they had performed on her, she suddenly sat up, choking and gasping, clawing at her stitches and sutures, ripping them out in a gory mess, screaming… and then she'd flopped down and died in a puddle of blood on her hospital bed, horror and dreadful pain frozen on her face for all of eternity.

Good times.

It made him smile.

He had finished her off, but Sigma had done most of the work. Nona Ferris had been Sailor Gamma--even if she didn't want to admit it, as soon as the sparkling marble from space had floated down to her, the instant she had touched it, the half-formed, blank Sailor Crystal--for no particular planet, just an essence, a letter, not a true name--had rapidly grown inside of her, solidifying her role in the world. She had been moved into play, no matter how much she refused to play the game of stars with the rest of them, whether she liked it or not. And she had lost the game she refused to play. Just as well.

Good times.

The only bad thing about this round of the game was Sailor Epsilon. He honestly hadn't expected her to show such resilience, hadn't expected her to last even this long. But that hardly mattered. On Sigma's wise suggestion, they were going to take her out of play in a different way. A sneak attack--something to paralyze Epsilon, keep her from interfering or taking extra turns. Fairchild knew just the right trick, too. Black hole sun, black hole sun…

He'd keep her alive. Sort of. Paralyzed forever, frozen in fear. 'I have no mouth and I must scream.' She would be subject to an infinitude of terrors and torments. Largely psychological. Psychological torments were the most effective type, the ones that lasted the longest. Cuts and bruises would eventually heal, or could be stitched up. If you cut deep enough, they would die, and then they would be free of their torment. But if you kept a person alive and simply poked into their brain a little bit, poked into it deep enough and long enough, pulled their strings and pressed their buttons… Epsilon, he could see, had a fragile kind of mind. She was not truly _brave_ (though, to her credit, she didn't _think_ she was, either). She was simply foolish and selfish, acting because nobody else would protect _her_ if she were to fail.

That could be exploited easily, deliciously, wonderfully.

He would see the entire world squirming and writhing and screaming, and he would watch from the distance, laughing and enjoying the warmth and cheer that it brought to him. People would live their worst nightmares, unable to awaken.

Nothing personal.

He was just out looking for a good time, was all, and this was certainly one of the most amusing worlds he had come by recently. The ugly maggots crawling across its dusty surface were frankly hilarious, the lot of them. Like wriggling little worms dressed up in funny suits. It made for a delightful little game. Kept him occupied, anyway.

He was Out right now, actually, sculpting shadows and crafting nightmares. His 'body'--or at least, the repulsive human form that he had temporarily borrowed, as his _true_ radiant form had its thousands of long, sinuous claws full with weaving darknesses in preparation for their next move--was just keeping Sigma occupied, keeping her from going anywhere or letting her mind wander too far; he wanted her to keep her mind solely on pleasing him, and this had proven a useful tactic to do so. Not that she was a deep thinker anyway. She preferred to stew in her own misery, and that was what bonded her to him. It was what was easiest to manipulate about her--fear, misery, self-loathing. When her mind was focused entirely on pleasing him, she felt useful and special and wonderful; she served him better under those conditions, when she could be whipped into doing what he wanted with a few simple sighs and a shake of the head. She would volunteer increasingly awful things, or easily be bent to his will to commit violent acts, simply to get him smiling at her and praising her again. All of it hollow and entirely insincere (what did he care about her or anybody else on this flying ball of shit?) but each word he said to her was carefully crafted to _sound_ sincere, and she took it at face value. And if--no, when--she did those horrible things she suggested, she would develop further into the shape he wanted. Ever so delicious--seeing her squirm like she did, so desperate to please only him, with an increasing disregard for the basic tenets of human decency…

Out in the ether, his beautiful form quivered with dreadful, cold, mirthless laughter, while in the mansion on top of the hill…

His words had always been warm and comforting as an old puffy quilt, but his skin offered none of the warmth that a true human would; nor did it taste of eager salty sweat, nor did his breath come out in short, impassioned bursts, nor did he moan or grunt in pleasure. He merely sat there, his fingers curling her dirty-blond hair around his strangely long fingers, his face tilted back towards the ceiling, in silence. His touch--his skin--every part of it--was like ice. Like rubbing down a cadaver, or sucking on a large amount of ice cubes.

Sigma did not complain, no matter how uncomfortable it was. He had chosen her, picked her beyond all other people, and he had allowed her to go to bed with him. It was a privilege, an honor. Even if she didn't _like_ it that much--where were the sunshine and rainbows that all the romance novels promised?--she knew that it was an _honor _to serve such a man. She had been _chosen_ to do so, granted a gift and a privilege. So there had to be something special about it, right? Yes. This meant that there was something special about her, although she would not have been able to tell you what it was. But whatever it was, it was important to Mr Fairchild--_she _was important--and he had deigned to allow her to serve him in any way he ordered her to do so. She nuzzled her cheek against the ice of his skin, hoping to warm some part of her up; her lips were feeling ice-burned, and in her heart, it felt as though she would never be warm again. For a moment, a deep chill passed over her, gripping at her neck and squeezing all the way down her spine. But she ignored it the best she could.

He grunted as he came back into the human shell, and Sigma squeaked in surprise, licking her lips. It tasted and felt like a second-degree freezer burn. He grinned toothily and patted her head.

"All ready now, are we?"

"If you're ready, I'm ready," she said cheerily.

"You're learning," he said approvingly. "Now get up." Fairchild produced a handkerchief from nowhere and tossed it at her; she caught it and used it to wash her face. It still felt like freezer burn, but there some of the edge was taken off. "Yes, Master," she responded. "What would you like me to do?"

He grinned a crocodile's grin.

Yes, she was coming along very nicely.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

"What are you afraid of?"

It was nearly Halloween, and she was getting into the spirit of it. Trying to, anyway. Halloween was by far her favorite holiday. Sure, Christmas was pretty cool, too, but people tended to look at you mighty funny if you walked into the party wearing a costume, even if it was a meticulously-designed outfit you had spent four days hand-sewing by yourself. She knew this from experience. Besides, she liked going to the corn mazes and haunted houses that they had had back in her Ohio hometown. Halloween was just a lot cooler on every single imaginable front.

"If I tell you, are you going to do something to try and scare me?" he asked suspiciously, cocking one eyebrow.

"No, sir--never," Morgan replied honestly. That was one part of the holiday she had never gotten into--the mischief. Mischief and terror just wasn't her style at all (and what if she'd gotten into _trouble_?); no, she much preferred the cute costumes and bucketsful of candy. This year, she was sewing a costume that she had taken three days to design--a cute, modest Little Red Riding Hood outfit. Morgan had not bought an entire costume from a store since ninth grade, though she would occasionally purchase props that she couldn't make herself--for instance, she would have to purchase a basket this year. She had learned to make baskets in Girl Scouts years ago, but hadn't been at all good at making them. Of course, she had a ready-made sailor costume, if she just said the right things… but this would be something else to take her mind off of her unemployment.

The tips of Moffat's ears turned red, and his cheeks went slightly pink as well. He hated admitting shit like this to anybody, but he supposed it would be okay to tell her. She wouldn't use that information against him; he was confident of that. And besides, the proposition he was saving for later… if they sealed that deal, then they would have to get to know one another better, in order to perform their job more efficiently… and, he admitted, in order to protect one another a little more closely. This proposition, mind you, was strictly business. He was sure that that would please her. He knew that she had lost her job, although she hadn't told him. In fact, he found this out because he had called to La Reve to order a cake for a retiring detective colleague, asked if he could have it delivered, as he was a busy man, and been told that, no, he couldn't, because they had just let their delivery-girl go a week or two back. So he had gone to pick the cake up by himself during a lull in work.

He hadn't brought up the business proposition to her yet. For one, he was dog-tired. It had been a late night. He would bring it up a little later, find some way of approaching the subject.

"Fine. Clowns, deep water, storms, and needles."

"Clowns?" she asked, giggling a little bit behind her hand.

"Yes. Fuckin' clowns."

"I think clowns are pretty neat," she said mildly. "My mother has friends who were clowns in the Ringling Bros circus. They went to our church when I was little."

"Ugh." He made a face, lip curling in disgust. "If that happened to me, I'd have to make sure I didn't stumble onto a hellish satanic orgy by mistake." Well--they probably wouldn't have their makeup on if they went to church, would they? That kind of shit made God cry, probably. Still. Creepy as all hell. She laughed--briefly, he tried to remember if he'd ever heard her laugh before, but he couldn't recall. "I'm glad this amuses you, Morgan," he said crossly.

"I mean, _clowns_, though… they're so _happy _and _friendly_."

"Apparently, you've never seen or read IT. _Or_ any Batman stories." He took a sip from his thermos of lukewarm black coffee. "Your turn. What are you afraid of, huh?" Morgan twiddled her index fingers together and smiled shyly.

"You'll think it's silly."

"Hey, you thought _my_ fear was silly. I think that gives me a bit of license to giggle in wry amusement at _your_ fears. Fair enough, I think."

Her face turned red now, too.

"Okay. Um. Reptiles… fish… birds… fire… noises in the night… heights… strangers… small places… dark places… small, dark places… failing… being yelled at… the Rite of Spring…"

"Wait, what?" he said.

"The Rite of Spring. It's a classical piece by Igor Stravinsky."

"Yeah, I knew _that_, but… why?" He grinned.

"Did you ever see Fantasia when you were little? It was those dinosaurs--the tyrannosaurus killing that poor little stegosaurus. Every time I hear the song, that's all that comes up in my mind, instead of the dance routine that's supposed to go with it." She whimpered a little bit, the image obviously having risen in her mind's eye already.

"So you can go around shooting horrific affronts unto natural law and all reason in their hideous un-faces, with no real problem at all, except maybe a weak stomach, but you can't listen to a good tune. Huh."

"Well--well, that's different, isn't it?" she replied, a mite defensively. She twiddled her index fingers together again, looking embarrassed.

"I guess so," he conceded after a moment or two of consideration. In case of monsters, she _did_ have a gun that she could use to deal with the damn things. Two hundred rounds a second of burning fireball-bullets would shut 'em up pretty quickly. But how could you prevent yourself from meeting strangers on the street, though, or hearing noises in the night? He still thought that those were silly things to be afraid of, but he could sorta see how it was _different_--that it would be awfully difficult to deal with natural things you couldn't control. Which was his number-one fear, which he hadn't cared to admit to anybody else--in case someone could use it against him. He hated the thought of losing control in any capacity. He liked being in charge and being in control of everything he participated in, and was pretty sure he'd go _nuts_ if he wasn't. That was why he carried his gun everywhere, why he would at least _act_ like he was in charge, even if he knew he was outnumbered or outclassed. Keep calm, act like you were in complete control long enough, and the situation would tilt in your favor. Did nobody any good to lose their head and thus the control of the situation. She smiled nervously. "I still think it's pretty silly. But I can see what you mean."

She fidgeted in her seat a bit.

They sat on opposite ends of a rickety old park-bench on the sandy shore of the beach, well away from the water. Mr Moffat had insisted that they not go and sit on the boardwalk--which was what she had wanted to do, to lean over the railing and look at the white-capped salty waves. But she supposed, since he had professed a fear of deep water, that it couldn't be helped, and it would have been terribly rude to beg him to go out there with her. So they had settled for sitting on the shore. It was a surprisingly chilly night. Seagulls circled high above their heads, crying into the salty winds, and the sad gray sea lapped quietly and hauntingly against the sand and the boardwalk's support pylons, further beyond where they sat. There was something peculiarly sad about being at the beach this late, and with only one other person there, said other person shotgunning a thermos full of lukewarm coffee and largely being quiet. He took a swig of it presently and looked at his wristwatch, which had just beeped cheerfully.

She had been the one to call Mr Moffat this time. Despite herself, she was worried about him; he was, after all, the closest thing she had to a friend. She was worried that Miss Sigma or Mr Fairchild would go after him, kill him, vanish him from this world. And then there was the things that he had helped her deal with… she worried for his mind. He seemed a fine fellow, did Mr Moffat; she didn't want to see him harmed. She was desperately trying not to be annoying--she wasn't sure of her success in this goal--keeping in mind that he was a busy man, with an important job. He probably had friends, too. Maybe even a girlfriend, for all Morgan really knew. She was trying her hardest not to intrude upon the life that she was aware he probably had.

But anyway, she had called him, using the ancient payphone outside of her apartment building (she didn't have a cellphone, being unable to afford one--and anyway, what would be the point? She didn't have anybody to call and talk to; letters and postcards seemed to suit her parents and her brothers just fine), nervously asking him if he wanted to visit, or if he wanted to do whatever it was that friends did. Just to make sure he was okay. Well, she had sort of asked. Stammering and tripping over her words, he had had to use context clues, make sense of what he said, and repeat it back to her--so it was almost like the other way around, as if he had asked her out. Morgan wondered if he thought she was annoying or weird for her stammering inquiry.

He sipped from his coffee and looked at his watch again.

"If you don't mind it, Morgan, I'm gonna turn on my scanner." He reached into his jacket pocket. He liked to have it on him when he was off-duty on normal days; he had been listening to it increasingly just recently, to try and catch any signal of things gone horribly wrong. It was a valuable tool. He tried to keep four things on him at all times--his gun, his taser, his scanner, and a pair of handcuffs--well, five, if you counted the wallet with all the licenses for that stuff. You never knew when it would all come in handy. Morgan nodded, and he switched the scanner on, turning it up so they could both hear. He put it between them on the bench. "Hey, Morgan--do me a favor?" She nodded, and he handed her the keys to the ugly Cadillac Brougham. "There's a lunchbox in the car. If you could go get it for me, I'd be grateful."

"Oh, yes, sir," she said. She scampered off, and he leaned back against the bench, rubbing his forehead with one hand. It was just past dusk on a Friday evening, so the scanner was sure to be lively with chatter--emergencies and taxicabs and truckers and the like.

For just a moment, he nodded off, head drifting down, his chin resting against his chest. The early-morning graveyard was always a tiring shift, but this one had been unusually busy, full of hard work--a startling, amount of disturbingly violent domestics and even three murders--which was an amount he hadn't seen in the previous five years of his career combined. He was bone-tired after all that work. Sure, he'd slept for about six hours (he was a fellow who didn't need a whole lot of sleep to function, as he was almost perpetually wired on adrenaline) and had been chugging down coffee for an hour or two now, but he was still worn out. He was glad it was his day off today. As he dozed, voices filled the void between waking and sleep, mumbling and whispering desperation and panic and fear…

"Mr Moffat?"

A hesitant, twitchy hand touched his shoulder, and he jolted awake once more. Noise from the scanner and from the sea scrambled in as an unfamiliar jumble of chatter, disorienting him for a moment. Was that what he'd heard while he was dozing? He yawned and scratched his cheek. The shoulder-tapper was Morgan with the lunchbox he had asked her to fetch from the Brougham. She set it down next to the scanner.

"Yeah, sorry. Thanks." He took the keys back and pocketed them before opening the lunchbox; the hinge squeaked as it did. It was made of some cold, thick, heavy-duty metal, and this interested Morgan. How much protection did you need for your lunchables, really? That thing could have survived a thermite meltdown, looked like. "Have some if you want. I packed some for us both." He started pawing through the box, looking for something. "Picnic by the sea. Relaxing, isn't it?" Finally, he came up with a sandwich folded up neatly in saran wrap; it had been cut in half diagonally and had the crusts removed. "Hope you like egg salad. It's the only thing I can make that's fancier than a bologna sandwich."

"I don't mind at all," she said. "Thank you very much." She accepted the sandwich half he offered to her, and wondered why he had bothered bringing the little picnic as she started to unwrap it, politely taking small nibbles from it. At any rate, it was a pleasant surprise. The egg salad was light and quite tasty. She envied him slightly; whenever she tried to make it, it was always heavy and oily--same with tuna salad and chicken salad.

"There's Cheetos and pop, too." He spoke with his mouth full, bits of bread and egg salad rolling around with a wet, nasty smacking noise. Morgan frowned a bit, but then forced a smile onto her face; she hated it when people spoke with their mouths full or chewed with their mouths open. It was the noise and the spectacle. Very rude. Not to mention gross. "Didn't know what kind you like, so I got grape pop."

"Thank you very much," she said. Her voice was polite, but her face held a baffled expression.

The truth was that Moffat had gone to the trouble of making a picnic lunch for the both of them because he couldn't think of any other way to display gratitude. Morgan often looked like she wanted to run away and hide, like she was terrified of everything going on around her--but she would grind her teeth and stand her ground, even if her legs were quaking in the process, and she had saved the city--perhaps the planet, for all he knew. At first, admittedly, he had ordered her to do so and she had just agreed hastily because he was a figure of authority, but as time had gone on, she had started doing so more voluntarily. He admired that, and felt it needed to be rewarded somehow. But he wasn't a rich man, so unfortunately, he couldn't have rewarded her too much, with something fancy. Well, he didn't truck with giving people fancy, impractical gifts, anyway. But he was a passable cook, and people always liked eating good food. So, after he'd hung up talking to her on the telephone yesterday evening (well, _he_ had been doing most of the proper talking--she had just stammered and mumbled a nervous request for company), he'd set about making the egg salad.

Maybe it was weird of him to do all this, but in his mind, she deserved a little reward, and that was the best he could do right now.

He tore open the bag of puffy Cheetos and listened to the scanner, increasingly uneasy as it played a symphony of disaster and panic:

There were six people squeezed into a small 1950s-style diner on Fairfax Avenue. They had been there for hours, gazing, dead-eyed, at the slick chrome surfaces. Then they had started arguing with one another. Then they had had a peaceable hour. Then the men had ganged up on a waitress and started tearing at her like dogs. And now there was only one person left, standing in a tacky puddle of blood that foamed up around the soles of her boots. Blind, empty eyes were cast at the ceiling. Blood trickled slowly from their sockets. She had seen things. Terrible things. So she had been forced to put her eyes out. Then she wouldn't see them anymore. But the new absence of her eyes didn't do anything to stop the visions. There were still things crawling around within her, things from beyond the cool, pleasant darkness of blindness, things that flashed and blinked like strobe lights, things that smiled.

She felt icy fingers crawling down her spine.

There was a woman, thirty years of age, shut into the bathroom of a parsonage, refusing to come out. Her husband lay dead in the living room, killed by her bare hands. She had been told, in her dream, by an angel, that she must do so. He had been trying to do unmentionable things to her, things that were displeasing in the eyes of the Almighty, and she had prayed for forgiveness, and she had offered up his newly-cleansed heart to God. Blood was the only thing that could appease His wrath. It was as it always had been. The man had offered his life up to be cleansed. The man had. But she needed to offer something up to God, too, crying out for forgiveness and to be spared from His wrath. Her hands wandered to her belly, and she scratched at a tiny twitching spot beneath her skin. There was a tiny alien thing pulsing in her womb. A woman knew when it had started to grow big and strong enough, when it was _alive_. A tiny foot slammed heavily against her ribs, and tiny piercing nails scratched at the muscle walls within her body. It wanted out, wanted to stumble out into the sunshine and live. She saw visions of it dancing in her head. A little boy learning to ride a tricycle, a little girl trying on Mommy's Sunday shoes. But it was not to be. The angel had said so. It would have to be offered up to appease God, to be spared His just wrath. Blood dripped onto the ivory-tiled bathroom floor, staining the purple mat beside the bathtub, as she furiously clawed it free, and then, she would be free, too, and would once again be in God's favor. Blood was the only thing that would wash sins away, and sin had to be washed away in the end. She didn't want to go to Hell, didn't want to be apart from their just and merciful God, apart from that magnificent radiance.

She saw a flame flickering in the darkness, and on the heavy wind was a whiff of brimstone.

There was a little boy sitting in bed. His daddy had told him that monsters don't exist, but every kid knows that grown-ups do nothing but lie. His mother had insisted on turning the light off, but again, every kid knows that lights are the only thing--beside blankets--that keep the monsters away. At least he still had his blanket. His blanket was thick, warm, and had pictures of racecars printed all over it. It would protect him as long as he had it pulled up over his head. The monsters wouldn't see him and would just stay away. There were lots of monsters that skulked around at night, but the one that scared him most was the clown that always came through the door to his bedroom, a thing with ugly, distorted features, blearily outlined against the soft light in the hallway. He was confident that if he was under his blankets, though, the clown with the bitter-flavored ice cream in his pockets and the hot, rough hands would open his door and look in and go, 'no, I don't see Toddy in here, I'll have to go somewhere else,' and the clown would go and pet and squeeze a different little boy.

He felt warm drool dripping down the back of his neck, and a hot pair of hands on his shoulders.

There were two groups of men fighting desperately for survival, for supremacy. Guns, knives, broken glass, bare hands--anything that they could find became a weapon, something with which to destroy their hated enemy. The world would become a better place; they feared for a future that was ruled by _those_ people. Only one group would come out alive. They would protect themselves, their own people, and then they would destroy those that would lead the world into such an ugly future. The world would be safe, and in their hands, it would be a beautiful new place. The future would be written in blood and flame. Red life dripped onto the black hardtop streets and slid into the gutters, seeming to write a letter to future generations; never fear, for they were working every minute to make it a better place.

A stone was thrown into a shop window, and it was quickly followed by a lit torch.

The cool, dispassionate voices that all emergency dispatchers had were all starting to crack with each new message, becoming desperate and frightened. None of them had had to deal with this amount of disaster and crime before. It had been very sudden. It had started out slowly. Well, relatively slowly--as slow as it ever got in Los Angeles. Nothing unusual. Then, there had been more and more desperate calls for help. Calls about murder, calls about abuse, calls about arson, calls about assault, completely mad calls about creatures being on the loose.

They were running out of personnel to respond to these emergencies.

Firefighters had been called to deal with a vicious inferno that had been set at the northeastern edge of the city. They were coping well, but that was because you could just douse fire and be done with it. The other emergency services were not quite so lucky; the firefighters, once finally done with dousing the fires, were sent to try to help the paramedics and the police, and even so, they were being stretched thin rather quickly.

The paramedics and ambulances of every hospital were quickly becoming jammed up and busy, too busy to respond to every single call--though they were still trying their hardest to do so. They were running on frightened, nervous energy. The firefighters and the police were trying to give medical help to people they found, as well, but there were a lot of people to attend to--whether they were innocents in need of medical assistance, or the people that needed to be restrained from causing further harm to others.

Something suddenly seemed to have gotten into the city as a whole, and nobody could quite explain it.

Except maybe Morgan. She had paused with the egg salad sandwich midway to her open mouth; she had been frozen that way for several minutes now, listening to the desperate frenzy of news that flew from the scanner. She turned it down slightly and closed her mouth, looking at Moffat.

"D'ya think…?" she started, a worried expression crossing her face. Moffat tried to stifle an involuntary yawn behind his hand.

"I think so," he agreed quietly. He knew what she was going to ask. Did he think it was connected to the flash bastard in the leather jacket in some way or the other? Yes. He was pretty certain of that. And he was certain of what they had to do. But what _could_ either of them do? It was different from the spiders, the rubbery black things, the shadow that ate part of the Westside, and the creepy-as-fuck worms that had animated those things the last time. He stood up and reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out his cigarettes and lighter. This would take some thinking. If he sat around on this bench, spent too much time thinking, he would nod off again, and that was the last goddamn thing he needed. Morgan reached into her pocket. "That's a good start, yeah," he said, glancing at her from the corner of his eye. Behind him, she mumbled the correct words, and the pretty yellow lightshow sparkled and flickered in response, changing her into her Sailor Epsilon outfit. The light seemed brighter than usual today. Briefly, he wondered why, then decided he didn't care that much. It was time to focus on the matter at hand. But he was tired, despite the coffee and the picnic… his mind lurched slowly forward, when usually, it was quick and keen, dancing fiercely with strong, virtuous thoughts. He yawned again, covering his mouth, and turned to look at Sailor Epsilon. There was a slightly concerned expression on her face, but her eyes were set; she seemed to be waiting for him to say something. "Go get in the car," he said, waving a hand. "We'll respond to some of these calls and see if we can't try to help the situation."

"Of course," she agreed. She'd heard of Mischief Night, but this was getting rather out of hand. The best thing to do was to try to bring some measure of order and sanity to the situation--to try to help the police and the firefighters and the paramedics. She was certain that any person who hadn't been affected by… by… _whatever Mr Fairchild might have done_ would be doing the same thing. It was the right thing, and whenever pressed, people _did_ usually try to do what was good and right for their fellow man. Disasters had a way of uniting people. Even if the disasters themselves were truly heartbreaking and disturbing, there was still that little beam of sunshine.

She would pour all of her power into defeating whatever spectre Mr Fairchild had brought over the city--return it to its normal state. The good guys--one of the heroes--always did their best to do what was right, to protect the innocent folks caught up in all this mess, and good guys always came out on top. Right?

Right…?

She shook her head a little bit. Couldn't think that way. Mustn't. Had to focus. If she let her mind wander, she would get afraid, and she would start considering sane and rational things, like risk and personal safety, and she would want to run away and hide. She shook her head again. No. She couldn't think about that. Really… underneath it all… she did _want_ to run.

But she couldn't.

Mustn't.

Because… she was a hero… It sounded weird, turning it around in her head for a moment. But it was the truth. Guardian of the City of Angels, Sailor Epsilon.

A hero.

And heroes didn't run away.

Never.

She shoved the Gatling into the backseat of Moffat's current Cadillac and then took her own seat up front, silent, worrying. She glanced at Mr Moffat. He was yawning again, and she felt bad for possibly keeping him from getting the amount of sleep he needed, for all this work just piling on the stress, which probably made him even more tired than he already would have been at the end of a hard day of doing policeman things. She hadn't known him for a very long time, but she did know that he wasn't going to just sit in the car and nap while she went and took care of things. Not even if she asked him, not even if she _told_ him to do so. People often had a habit of ignoring what she asked them to do. No, Moffat was the sort who would keep on truckin' as long as he was alive, even if he was bone-tired.

It would have been better for him to take a nap. He looked like he was dead on his feet as it was, even after chugging all that coffee and eating his half of the picnic on the beach.

"Um. Do you think you should… um… maybe… take a nap… while I do stuff?" she asked, trying to smile at him.

"No," he said flatly.

"But--"

"_No_."

"You're stubborn, Mr Moffat, if you you'll pardon my rudeness in saying so," she sighed, looking out of the window.

"Pft. I ain't _stubborn_, I'm _tenacious_. Same could be said of you, really, girly. It ain't a bad thing. Matter of fact, I think it's admirable. Good quality to have." The last statement was muffled and rendered almost underneath yet another yawn. "Besides--it's only what's fair. If the other policemen can't rest, I won't, either."

"That's admirable, sir," she said, smiling exasperatedly. And he was, of course, right. Despite herself, she was slightly irritated with that. She wondered if perhaps her crystal should have gone to Mr Moffat after all. He was a much stronger person; he wasn't afraid like she was--or, if he was, he never displayed it, and never felt like acting on it. Such power as she had was, perhaps, better entrusted to the hands of the brave and the bold, police officers or firefighters or soldiers… definitely not a terrified little girl with nothing to her name, no great passion or absolute sense of justice. What a strange mistake the crystal had made in coming to _her_. Because there was nothing she was proud of.

But then again…

She liked _this_. Glory, power, heroism. Dreams of what she may-or-may-not become in the future, if she kept trying… maybe…

She looked up at the sky. It was slightly past dusk, and the stars were starting to come out. Briefly, she wondered what Mr Moffat dreamed of when he slept. She dreamt of that dark, warm place in the midst of a sea of stars; it seemed as though that dream had pushed all of the other dreams out of her mind, to the point where all that she dreamed about was that dark, warm place. Sometimes, it changed. Not much. But it _did_ shift and change in minute ways. Mr Moffat probably didn't dream such weird things; he probably dreamed about being Batman or something, knowing him.

She looked back at him. Another yawn. Before she had time to ask him again to take a power-nap in the car, he slammed on the brakes roughly and sent the car fishtailing about into an empty parallel parking space; the sudden movement slammed Epsilon against her car door, and she squeaked, bewildered.

"Yeah," he mumbled.

"Mr Moffat--sir--really, if you need a nap, I'll be all right. I think I can do enough work for the two of us." She reached back and patted the heavy metal of the Gatling gun, trying to give him a winning, confident smile.

"Mm. No," he said, shaking his head. It would have been nice, but it wouldn't have been fair to the other police officers, or the paramedics, or the firefighters, or the normal folks trying to help out. Just another day of the hellstorm that was becoming his life. Supposed that was the way with superheroes, though. Trouble followed 'em like metal shavings after a magnet, and as long as you tagged along with the hero, no matter how normal a fella you were, trouble would follow you, too. And honestly, it was okay with him. Sure, he'd never put much into mystic bullshit--but he _was_ a man who saw what was right in front of him, even if he didn't understand it all that well. He didn't understand the plague-zombies or the rubbery skin-crawling things from that first night. But they were there, and they were real, so he'd just have to deal with them in his own way. That was all that one could do, really. Right it. So that the world started going the right way again. And that meant no falling asleep on the job.

Besides… he had run poor Morgan ragged several days ago, during that affair with the zombies. If she could force herself to keep on despite almost complete exhaustion, so could he. He could probably do it _better_, in fact, because he was more fit than she was. Wasn't fair to make her wear herself ragged and then not do the same. Double standard, that was. Wasn't fair.

"Anyway. This fella here… Let's see if we can get some answers out of him," he said, opening up the door and climbing out of the car.

The man in question was carrying a knife--shit, looked more like a goddamn machete--that dripped blood in a splattered, uneven trail as he stumbled down the sidewalk. He was bedraggled and sad-looking, with bloodshot eyes and gray hair, and he was mumbling softly and madly of the things he had seen and the things he was seeing right now flashing before his eyes. Those ugly fucking things had been trying to take his home. Those big red worms with the teeth. He didn't have much of a home, but he had to protect it. A man had a right to do so. So he had defended it with lethal force. Only a knife, but it had proved effective enough. Those red things wouldn't be poking around his home anymore. But now his home was sopping wet and unlivable. So he had to go looking for a new home. Walking. Always walking. Never resting. Never again. He knew that he would never rest because he would never find another home. He hadn't had a home since 19 and 71, when he came back from the 'Nam. Ever since then, he'd been like a stray cat. He'd had a cat traveling with him for awhile, sleeping in his ragged Army duffle bag, and he missed it awful. Such was his life. He'd just keep walking until he died, and he'd never find another home, never again, never eat a warm square again… He shuddered and whimpered a little, and his bloodshot eyes started leaking greasy yellowing tears.

Epsilon listened closely to his mad mumblings and cast a pitying look at him, standing up on tiptoe (tottering a bit, considering that the gun threw off her weight, and the fact that Moffat was a solid foot taller than she was) to whisper in Mr Moffat's ear. "What do we do with him? He just sounds like he's hallucinating."

He leaned down quite a bit to whisper back into her ear. "He's done somethin' to someone with that knife, though."

"Yes, I think you're right. But who… and what?" Moffat shrugged. "Well, how do we find out? I mean--" She looked at the shuffling, shambling man in the ratty, thin old jacket. "I mean. Um. We can't very well leave him entirely alone. Can we?" she asked.

"No, you're right." He nodded and thought for a moment.

"I think… we should give him the bits of lunch we didn't eat. Um. Try to talk to him. Er--if that doesn't sound too silly. What do you think, Officer?" She smiled nervously. She wasn't yet used to coming up with battle plans that didn't involve 'pump it full of magical lead' as a primary strategy.

"Hm. Good idea." He ducked back into the car for a moment and brought out the heavy metal lunchbox. Inside was a half-eaten egg salad sandwich--which Morgan hadn't felt like finishing after listening to the scanner's news, but hated to throw away--a small bag of Cheetos, a can of grape pop, and a pack of Juicy Fruit gum. It wasn't much, but it might have been enough to get the guy talking to them. "Hey. Hey, man," he said loudly. The homeless man looked at them, rheumy eyes unfocused, lost. "We got some lunch for you, man. Egg salad n' Cheetos."

There was a long and heavy pause between all three of them--Sailor Epsilon leaning on the barrel of her gun, watching carefully; Moffat holding out the half-wrapped sandwich to the homeless guy with a dopey forced grin on his face; the homeless guy staring blankly at the offered food. After about three minutes of this, the man snarled and swung the knife at Moffat, cutting deep into his forearm. He dropped the sandwich onto the concrete and hissed in pain, squeezing the wound tightly under his large hand to try to stop the bleeding. Epsilon yelped in alarm, touching his arm with a shaking hand. The white fabric of her glove was soft, and her hand glowed with a pale yellow light; her healing spell. The skin slowly stitched itself back together and scarred over, as if it had been there since childhood, an old wound from climbing trees or fiddling about with the tools on Granddad's workbench.

"Th--that was hardly called for, now, was it?" Epsilon said to the homeless man, her husky, quiet voice taking on a slightly higher, nervous pitch. "Very rude, you know, going around stabbing people like that." Moffat snickered and shook his head a bit. He felt awake and alive now; the healing spell seemed to have given him a jolt of energy even better than the coffee had. His bright-green eyes were vivid and full of life. "Especially people tryin' to help you. Um. If you'd please just tell us--what can you see?"

She yelped and barely ducked out of the way as the knife sliced the air beside her head, the blade catching on a loop in the yellow ribbon that was always tied in her hair and tearing it out. It fluttered to the ground, and her hair flopped loose, hanging over her eyes. She shook her head, and the homeless man gurgled pitifully. The noise was somewhere between crying, screaming, and feral growling, and she would have been hard-pressed to find a proper word for it.

"_Leave me alone, god dammit_!" he howled, stabbing randomly at the air. "_LEAVE ME ALONE_! _GET OUT OF MY HEAD_!" Epsilon clumsily tried to dodge the strikes, succeeding about half of the time. She dropped her gun on the sidewalk, not wanting to shoot him, and it fell with a thud, shaking the ground around them; besides which, she did better with trying to dodge when she wasn't weighted down with the gun. Moffat grabbed at the man's knife-hand, trying to catch it and disarm him, but the guy was moving like lightning--unusual for such an old-timer. Then again, fear and panic tended to get you juiced up on adrenaline, which could lead to brief bursts of superhuman strength and speed--like the parent who lifts the car off of their trapped child, or the person running from the police. He knew that well enough.

Clumsily, with a stroke of good fortune, she swiveled around on one foot and wound up out of range of the bloody knife. Epsilon caught the man's knife hand and it clattered to the ground. He thrashed about madly, wildly muttering and wailing and growling about the things that he could see, but neither Moffat nor Epsilon could see. Worms and roaches and rats and eyes and teeth, squatters, thieves, things that ate up everybody who got lost along the way; time moved on, and the clock roaches ate up everything that was left behind. A shiver made its way up Epsilon's spine, and again, she felt sorry for the poor man. She wondered whether his particular hallucinations were a product of Mr Fairchild casting some dark spell on the whole city, or whether the poor guy's mind was just addled from years of drugs and booze and cold and heat and rain and sun--baked and broiled and boiled. He thrashed again, and she almost lost her grip on his wrist, but she grunted with effort and pulled it behind his back, like she'd seen the guys do on COPS.

Moffat resurfaced from the passenger's side door, a strange dangling plastic thing in his hands. He had thought to stock the Brougham's glove compartment with an assortment of useful things. Among them were a few packets of random fast-food sauces--mostly Arby's barbecue sauce and soy sauce--napkins from Subway, straws, sporks, a Maglite, a wrench, several maps detailing different parts of the city… and flex-cuffs. Flex-cuffs were slightly harder to apply than normal, especially to combative folks like their current subject, but it was better than nothing. He didn't have the SpeedCuffs on him at the moment, though he wished he did. That would have been the most useful thing. He took the man's other arm, squeezing it tightly, and then cuffed the guy. At the very least, he stopped thrashing about so wildly.

"The roaches," he cried, the thick and greasy tears sliding down his face again.

"Now, you just hush, and we'll help stomp out those roaches. Won't we, Epsilon?" Moffat said in a calm, even, friendly sort of tone. She nodded, wincing in pain slightly as she tried to heal her own wounds with the spell; he'd gotten in some good hits, and the ugly red staining her sailor uniform's gloves and socks rather clashed with the pretty pale yellow ribbon. "But first, you gotta tell us where those roaches and worms are."

"Yes--please--if you will--where do you see them?" He whimpered and squirmed around wildly. His breath was growing shorter by the second. She waved a glowing hand at him; the healing spell was getting a lot of practice today, and she felt that was a good thing. Maybe it would be the key to healing the city, dispelling whatever dark hallucinogenic spell was affecting it.

But his breath was still short, a little bit of blood bubbled from one nostril, and his eyes bulged, as if he were choking on midair. "Everywhere," he whimpered, seeming to finally recognize their presence, or at least giving in to his capture. "They're everywhere."

"I don't see any--" Moffat started.

"Um. I have an idea that… I think he's hallucinating."

"Gotta say, that was pretty fuckin' obvious."

"Yes, but… Do you think that's what's happening to _everyone_?" It was a ridiculous theory, of course, but it dawned on Moffat that she was probably right. Los Angeles was a rough city, sure, but it wasn't _entirely_ peopled by criminals and psychopaths. Most of the folks here were decent, sane people just trying to get by the best they could--even the movie-stars and musicians--like the people in any other city on the planet. "I think… I think that maybe they can't see what's really in front of them. Like… you know when you're having a nightmare? And you keep trying to fight your way out, but you can't, so you just fight harder--because you're sure you're going to die, so you might as well go down fighting? Um. I'm rambling. I'm sorry."

"Difference is, though, with nightmares, you wake up sometime… and I got a hunch that these people ain't just sleepwalking. That they're _already_ awake. How d'ya figure we're gonna get around that?"

Behind them, as they thought in silence, the police-scanner wailed an increasingly dark aria of disaster and chaos. The dispatchers were panicking and shouting, having long since abandoned their traditional cool, calm, and dispassionate manner. Sirens shrieked and bleated, splitting the air; lights flashed and strobed, reflecting off of shop windows and skyscraper shells; fire danced across parts of town, old parts, history vanishing in the smoke, feeding the inferno with old things, and still, the ever-valiant firefighters tried to douse it. They had even recruited in some random people who seemed to be unaffected--more or less--by whatever hallucinogenic condition was driving the whole city nuts. They would, of course, go on fighting, even if they had to resort to the old-school fire brigade tactics, with only buckets and manpower to aid them. Because they were heroes, and heroes always went out swinging. Such was the way of the world.

Moffat snapped his fingers, seemingly having come up with a brilliant solution. "Got it. That Sigma girl can teleport. Can you?"

"Um." She fidgeted and chewed her index-fingernail nervously. "I--I could try, but--er--truth is… I don't know where they are. I wouldn't know where to go."

"Fuck."

"I'm very sorry, sir," she apologized. And she _was_ sorry; it showed in her expression. No faulting her for it, he supposed; it wasn't like _he_ would have known where to locate the fuckers, either. He patted her on the head idly.

They thought some more, though Moffat was growing increasingly distracted by the shrieking and chatter playing out on the scanner. He ran his hands through his hair, and it flopped lazily over his eyes. He couldn't concentrate. "D'ya wanna get back in the car and let's move on, look into the problem some more?" he asked. She cast a worried look at the homeless man, who was quieter, but still thrashing about and mumbling madly about the roaches and the crows and the worms. It seemed his voice had given out at last. At least the flex-cuffs were keeping him from hurting himself, or Mr Moffat, or Epsilon herself. "I don't think there's much more purpose we could serve here."

"I thought maybe my healing spell would work," she said sadly.

"Can't fault you for trying." Again, he patted her head. He got a multitool out of his pocket, opened it to the serrated knife-blade attachment, and started to cut the homeless man free of the flex-cuffs. There was no way they could keep him detained right now; the two of them had to move on and try to contain the chaos, try to learn more about it, so that they could fix everything that had gone wrong.

Both felt bad letting the fellow go off alone--but Epsilon made sure to snap the lid of the heavy metal lunchbox open and thrust the handle of it into the fellow's hand. At least the two of them could do _some_ tiny amount of good for him, even if Epsilon hadn't been able to fix the hallucinogenic stupor with her healing spell. At least he'd have a square meal to eat for now, if he felt so inclined. The truth was that this was the best thing either Moffat or Epsilon could do for the poor man right now. It was a very depressing truth, but then, she supposed, the truth wasn't always a beautiful, glittering, wonderful thing born of cosmic light and harmonious resonance. Sometimes, it could be downright ugly and frightening and depressing--in fact, truths often were.

Sailor Epsilon put her gun in the backseat of the car once again, and then climbed into her seat, looking at the retreating homeless man in the passenger's-side mirror. He was clutching the lunchbox tightly as he shambled and stumbled out of sight. Again, she felt poorly, that she couldn't do anything further. They were people under a spell; they weren't the same as the shadow-thing, or the decay-worms, or the tiny marching spiders and their rubbery friends. It would do no good to resort to using her gun in this situation. And the healing spell! She wondered why it hadn't worked to heal the man of his hallucinogenic stupor; she had been confident that it would. Why hadn't it worked?

As Moffat drove on, she rested her head against the window, trying to think of ways that she could possibly win this time. Of course she would win; she had to. The hero always won. Always won, never run. But there was still a definite question of how she--they, rather--would do so _this _time.

She breathed on the window, fogging it up. After a moment, she drew a few things on the glass with her finger. A clumsy, lopsided star. A cartoonish little octopus. An abstract, but neat, geometrical little set of lines and circles, rather like a little Japanese shrine gate. She didn't know why she had drawn this last thing at all, as she wasn't sure what it was supposed to symbolize or mean, and was puzzled as to why it was there. The fog faded away, leaving only ghost-faint traces of the images she had put there. She looked back at Mr Moffat. He was usually so stoic and calm, even when she was terrified, when she was quaking, stammering and stumbling over her words. Now, though, _he_ looked nervous--like he was in the beginning stages of a fine panic. He was grinding his teeth, and his knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel tightly.

So she had to remain calm and not be afraid. Keep calm and carry on… Even though she was honestly terrified of all the chaos going on outside. It was dark out there, with fire flickering against the sky in a couple of places, and lit largely by red-and-blue emergency lights. She squeezed her hands together nervously, fidgeted in her seat, and a soft whimper escaped her. She didn't know how they were going to win this one.

On the dashboard, the scanner continued to scream.

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The city below was eating itself alive, all because of a spell that Sailor Sigma had woven together. She sat on a bench in the garden, which was perched on a cliff overlooking the scenery. Of course she felt _slightly_ bad for having done it. She felt a little bit bad every time she did something like this. But if she didn't… if she disobeyed her master… she would be all alone again, abandoned for a better model, somebody stronger and smarter and all-over better. And what if he did replace her? She would have nothing else to do, nowhere else to go. No friends, no family, no job, no home… Her master was her only friend; the home that he had selected comfortable and wonderful. She couldn't imagine not living there, not living with _him_.

There were a total of fourteen Sailor Soldiers on this planet right now, he had informed her. All of them were _very_ capable of filling her role. Probably. He had never said that to her, but it was an implication that hung over her head a lot of the time--like the bloody Sword of Damocles.

"But I choose _you_. Do you understand, Laurie? I choose you. I get the feeling you may be someone special. We're going to create a new world together," he had said. She smiled to herself. Yes. A new world. A world for the lonely and the lost. A safe place. Where they wouldn't have to be alone anymore. With the holy power that her master had given her… that was what it was for. A gift. It felt like a drop of ice in her heart, but that was fine.

She tapped her claws on the plastic bench. They had taken some getting used to, of course, but now, she rather liked them--more than she'd liked her fleshy, small hands. In a twisted way, she was grateful for them. Her new hands were beautiful, a status symbol. They represented a high position--befitting her rank as his Chosen One. The claws, the scales--they were strong, and she needed to be strong in order to serve her master.

It was strange to lose the sensation of touch, admittedly. She had tried to touch things after her claws had grown. All she had felt was ice.

Her thoughts briefly turned to the people down below.

Now they would know what it felt like to be lost, to be completely alone, in a fog of their worst nightmares. They would know true isolation, misery, sorrow, panic, terror. Alone in the dark, hallucinating their worst fear tearing away at them--unable to wake up, because they were already awake. She smiled slightly. He had said he was satisfied with her work, although she hadn't perfected her control yet. There were some unaffected by the hallucinogenic gas, but she was sure that the chaos going on around them was probably enough to wear _those_ people down. Oh, she had been hesitant about doing it, at first, but she had learned not to question him or sass her master when he told her to do something. She didn't want to have him ask her twice; she had _learned_--oh yes. What scared her was that he wouldn't bother asking twice, but just kick her to the curb straightaway and go off looking for another Chosen One to do her work--that she would be a Disappointment to him. She simply couldn't let that happen.

"No," she said aloud.

She was afraid of being a disappointment. And so she would not let him down. Never. Not as long as she lived. With her claws, with her spells, she would forge a new future, a new world, all at her master's bidding.

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Down below, the city was eating itself alive.

He grinned darkly as he observed the anarchy, the _fear_ radiating out of the hundreds of people under the influence of the hallucinogenic gas that Sigma had poured down upon them. Fairchild, if pressed, would have to admit that her new Phobia attack was impressive for all the destruction it had caused. Self-preservation and fear were very closely linked; if pushed, any cornered beast would attack, viciously. And that was exactly what had happened--on a truly massive scale. Family bonds, friendly connections, delusions of civility--all erased in a fog of furious, fearful delirium.

Delicious.

He had demanded that she cast this spell to paralyze the city. It amused him to see such sport. It ate up at Sigma inside for more reasons than one. Deep in her heart, she felt bad about doing such things. But deeper in her heart, she wanted to please him, to be special, to be useful, to be loved. She didn't want to Disappoint him, or be scolded, or even worse, be replaced. She was terrified and conflicted and content with her role as his Chosen One… although she wasn't even close to pegging that every word to fall from his lips was a complete black lie--that he was manipulating her to a particular end, all for his own amusement--that he was just fucking with her in every single way conceivable.

Desperation, self-preservation, fear.

Just like any other maggot crawling in the dust of this miserable rock--no more important, no more special or interesting. Ah, lies. Funny thing about lies--the bigger you made them, the more obvious you made them, the easier people choked them down and accepted them as vital truths.

It made him grin, his hundreds of shining silver teeth glittering in the Dark, a long string of pinkish slaver falling from the corner of one of his glorious mouths.

He thumped his tail and continued to watch, silently, enjoying the show… planning his next move in the game.

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There had been a riot, and there had been dozens of people injured, both the affected and the innocent. Nobody knew how it started, or even why; nobody seemed inclined to share this information with the paramedics--some of whom had joined in with the riot instead of attempting to stop it and stem any possible loss of life. Nobody knew how it started, but it had ended up as a literal bloody mess, with moaning patients strewn across the street. Some had broken bones. Some had bloody flesh wounds. It varied. The one thing that was always the same, though, was the paramedics--the everyday heroes, trying their best to keep calm and carry on.

The remaining paramedics, of course, were impartial to either side of the riot, and were simply trying to help everybody that they could. But their supplies were running low. Mitch Montez wiped his brow with a hand and frowned, wondering how they were going to get out of this one. Hell, what had even happened? He had just woken up, rolled out of bed, gone to work, and the world went nuts. Talk about a bad day. He'd never complain about a busy night ever again.

He was trying to create a workable dressing for a sucking chest wound. A knife-puncture right into some unfortunate man's lung--it had been deflated, and the best that Mitch could do right now was a simple first-aid technique. There weren't even proper supplies to do it. He was currently working with a gauze pad and some Scotch tape--medical tape or duct tape would have worked slightly better, because they stuck to human skin better--but they had run out of medical tape a couple of hours back, and the duct tape was quickly dwindling, too. The machines were occupied, and the emergency areas of hospitals had overflowed, and all that were left were the ambulances.

There were four paramedics in the usual group. Two of them seemed to fall under the influence of whatever madness had infected the rest of the city, and had stumbled off, oblivious to what was in front of them. Annie had been mumbling about her hands; Paddy had been wailing about fire, the swiftly approaching inferno, and had curled up in a corner, catatonic with fear. Mitch and Sally had piled Paddy into the back of the ambulance and brought him along, with Mitch trying to soothe Paddy while Sally drove on to the next disaster.

They had been joined by two firefighters, who had finally doused the fire in their part of town and then split up their company to help the spread-thin police force and paramedics. One of them had gone the way that Annie had, muttering crazily about invisible people that were laughing at him and laughing and laughing and they wouldn't stop and they were loud and god dammit he'd shut them up but good and they wouldn't stop laughing and--

Then, thankfully, more reinforcements had arrived, in the form of three people who seemed unaffected by the visions.

One was an old African-American woman who had shambled up to Mitch and Sally bearing a suitcase full of things taken from her home medical cabinet. It wasn't much, but she would never know how helpful even that small amount was. She was currently taking care of some children that they had found amongst the fallen rioters, giving them a bit of baby aspirin and dabbing their cuts with tea-tree oil. One of the children had a broken, misshapen arm, and Sally was working on setting it the best she could with things that she had found lying around; the old woman was helpfully trying to soothe the children by singing some old hymn in a beautiful, soulful old blues-voice.

Another was a fourteen-year-old Hispanic boy. He only spoke Spanish, but seemed eager to help out, so he had gone with Mitch (who spoke a bit of Spanish) and was trying to help patch up patients the best he could with the supplies at hand. When Mitch asked where the kid's parents were, he answered that he didn't know, and that he was afraid. But everyone in the city was; any unaffected person who said they weren't afraid were either sociopaths that bore watching or complete liars.

The last was a pretty young Iraqi-American woman; she had been looking for her husband, as they apparently lived on this street, but she had gotten distracted with helping Sally and the remaining firefighter. One of the people they were treated had shrieked at her in fear and anger, but she had handled it with an eerily beautiful amount of calm, speaking to the man with a level, cheerful voice as she tried to level his head in order to stop him thrashing about. Right now, she was quietly telling the story of the Three Billy-Goats Gruff, lacking anything else to do. Unlike the African-American woman, she didn't have any songs to sing, just stories to tell; while neither tactic seemed to work very well with calming down the people they were taking care of, it did wonders for the remaining paramedics and volunteers.

They were doing the best they could, considering the circumstances, same as they always did.

Mitch looked up as he heard gravel crunching and crackling behind him. Old brakes groaned heavily as another car pulled up and parked nearby; the car was enormous, dark blue, and rusting in places. There were two people in that car--the driver a very tall man smoking a cigarette, wearing an old police fundraiser T-shirt and jeans; the passenger was a bespectacled, overweight young lady inexplicably dressed in a mini-skirted sailor costume. It didn't flatter her very well. She shut the passenger door of the car and trotted to keep close behind the driver, who tossed his cigarette down onto the pavement and crushed it under the toe of his tennis shoes. As he approached, he dug his wallet out of his back pocket and flashed a policeman's badge. Plainclothesman, Mitch supposed.

"Officer Moffat, LAPD," the tall fellow said. "You folks look like you could use some help."

"What's up with her?" Mitch asked, nodding towards Sailor Epsilon.

"Um. My name is Sailor Epsilon. It's… a very, very long story, I'm afraid," she said. She smiled and fidgeted a bit. "Well, anyway, we're here to help."

"Yeah." Moffat opened his mouth to try to explain Epsilon in brief, but just closed his mouth again and shook his head. She was right; it was too long a story. It had been too long a day, and he was running rather short on patience, honestly. Running around trying to help firefighters, trying to help other paramedics, trying to help ordinary folks. Just trying to help. He ran a hand through his hair and turned his head to look at the man on the ground. "So what's the story with this one?" he asked, kneeling down. His joints crackled as he did so.

"Punctured lung. Best we could do was this three-sided dressing."

"With scotch tape?" Epsilon said, slightly confused.

"It's all we have right now," Mitch replied, annoyed.

"Um. Well, I think Mr Moffat had some duct tape in his trunk. Maybe. And--er--anyway--" she said, smiling nervously. Mr Moffat had tried to think up some explanation of some sort at first, but had since given up entirely on doing so, simply resorting to, 'shut up and accept the help.' Poor fella; he was getting increasingly rattled. It worried Epsilon. Because if calm, level-headed, _cool_ Mr Moffat kept driving towards a panic, then she would have no choice but to panic, too, and that would not be good for the people of the city… being as she was the only one who had a slight chance of fixing all this, though she was still trying to puzzle out a solution to the problem. "I think I can help, too. Do him one better, like."

"Really."

"Yes, sir," she said. "Um. It's very hard to explain, like I said. Er--" She looked at Moffat for some help. He liked to boss people around, it seemed, and he _was_ a policeman--not to mention a very big, imposing-looking fellow--so people would probably be more receptive to being ordered around by him than by an overweight girl in a Halloween outfit.

"Peel off the dressing," he said. The paramedic looked at Moffat like he had suggested flapping his arms and flying off to seek help from the fairy kingdom. "Just trust me. Or rather--trust _her_, as she'll be doing all the work." He nodded at her, indicating for her to go on and do her work. She nodded back at him and knelt down next to the fellow with the punctured lung, carefully peeling off the dressing. She held a glowing hand over the man's chest for a few minutes, frowning in concentration. Soft, ugly squelching noises escaped from the hole, but eventually, they faded away; his respiration was no longer shallow and ragged as it had been--instead, it was returning to normal. Soon, his skin twitched and pulsed, knitting itself back together neatly. "There we go. He'll be fine."

"Mr Moffat?" she said, tilting her head.

"Yeah?"

"You--you've got a much louder voice than I have. Would you--may I ask you to ask the paramedics if they know whether he was in the riot or not?"

"Why?"

"I… I've sort of had an idea I'd like to try, if you don't mind it."

"What kind of an idea?" he asked. "Go on. I won't laugh." She had her doubts about that, because it _was _a rather ridiculous idea; she was well aware of it. It sounded silly in her head, and it would probably sound even sillier out loud. Still… even if it _was_ a silly idea, _any_ idea was worth trying at this point.

"Well--I think--if I could use my powers to sort of…" She waggled her fingers around vaguely. "…poke around inside of his mind… maybe I could see what he was seeing… and--er--knowing the cause--maybe I could try and come up with a better, more permanent solution." She smiled a bit lamely, fully aware of how silly it all sounded. "Um. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but…"

"Sure it'll be safe?" Moffat asked.

"Well… how… how hard can it be, anyway?" she said, forcing a nervous smile onto her face. Moffat looked at her. "I… I've got it under control, sir. Don't worry."

"You're a rotten liar," he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. Her face turned a little more red, and she fidgeted a bit. "Do what you gotta do, I guess. Can't be helped."

"Yes, sir--" He held up a hand.

"But you have to promise me you'll come out of it okay. No going nuts, no getting lost in someone else's mind, no turnin' into a vegetable, no dying, none of that shit. Am I clear?"

"Er. Yes, sir," she replied, fidgeting a bit. She wasn't sure how he meant that, and it made her slightly uncomfortable and nervous. He probably didn't mean anything at all by it. Probably just a policeman thing. Keeping watch over the citizenry, protecting and serving and all that. Secretly, she sort of hoped that perhaps it was a promise between friends. But he probably didn't mean it that way. Wouldn't friends make their promises with smiles on their faces? His had remained the same as ever when he spoke--with his mouth twitched up in a sort of perpetual cynical smirk.

"Good." He stood up straight, speaking in his loud and authoritative voice. "Would you folks happen to know whether this guy here was a participant in the riot, or whether he was a bystander that just happened to get fucked up?"

"I think he was a participant," a tall woman with honey-blond hair shouted from a bit down the street. She was working on setting someone's broken bone with the Hispanic man that they had encountered first.

"Right, thanks, ma'am," Moffat shouted back. She smiled up at him nervously, and he ruffled her hair with one hand. "Now, I meant what I said, Morgan. Don't fuck around while you're…" He waggled his fingers about vaguely, mimicking what she had done earlier. "Poking around in the guy's mind."

"No, sir, I won't. I think I'll be fine," she said, sounding completely unconvinced herself.

She cracked her knuckles nervously, spreading out her fingers and touching the rioter's forehead. She closed her eyes, let out a nervous whimper as she forced herself to concentrate… and then everything went completely black.


	8. Mind Games

_**Mind Games**_

_There are worlds other than these._

_Go, then._

Morgan shuddered, crossing her arms and rubbing her upper-arms with her hands. It was cold and it was dark and it was lonely, rather different from the place that had recently started appearing in _her _dreams so often; the place that she dreamed of was lonely, but it was warm, and every time she dreamed of it, it grew brighter with a burnished golden light… perhaps some inner light, as whenever she dreamed, she felt it burning in her chest. It wasn't like heartburn; it was just _warm_. She couldn't explain it at all; it puzzled her and though the dreams were neither pleasant or unpleasant, it disturbed her a little.

But there was none of that about this place, wherever this place was. She looked around. There was nothing out here. Just cold and dark as far as the eye could see. She shivered again, wondering if she should try to move. Who knew where she would end up if she _did_, though? She had promised Mr Moffat that she would come back safely. And that meant no getting lost in… in… wherever this might have been.

Still…

There wasn't much else to do, was there?

Nothing else to do except try to move on to _somewhere_, to get out of this _nowhere_.

She gave a soft whine and closed her eyes tightly.

She didn't like it in here. It was dark. You never knew what nasty things waited around for you in the dark--things littered across the carpet to trip you up, or sleeping dogs that would jump up and bite your face off, or a maniac with an axe sitting there breathing quietly in the black… Another soft whine of fear escaped Morgan. And that was just the normal dark. There were probably loads nastier things waiting in _this _dark. Bogie-men and bugbears and nightmares and Cthulhu, for all she knew.

_Was that someone else breathing_?

She shook her head.

The worst thing was that right now, she didn't even have her gun with her. All she had was herself… and what good was that without her Gatling?

_Yes, breathing… ragged and gurgling…_

She dug her fingernails into her upper arms and looked around wildly again for the source of whatever noise she was hearing. Or maybe wasn't hearing. Maybe it was only her mind… she wasn't quite sure.

No… No, she had promised Mr Moffat. Promised she wouldn't go nuts. And that promise could apply to the entire city, too; there was a city with a couple of million people, give or take a few, waiting to be rescued. She couldn't lose focus, because she had to save the city and all its people.

_A low, soft growl, rising, turning into a malevolent chuckle_…

She shook her head again, trying to dispel those noises from her mind.

With a soft squeak of fear, she stepped forward in the dark. There was nothing beneath her feet, but she still seemed to move forward--as far as she was able to tell, anyway. It _felt _as though she was moving forward, with cold air brushing against her and blowing her untied hair around a little bit. Another forward-ish step, another, and another. There had to be _something _in this man's mind, something that he was seeing, something that drove him (and the other people) to panic and riot and generally mess about.

A puff of wind rushed past her head, and she turned her head. She immediately regretted doing so.

Behind her was a _grin_--dripping a pinkish foam at the edges. It seemed to have no lips or other facial features around it. Just _thousands _of dagger-like teeth curled up into an enormous horrible, free-floating grin. There was something else wrong with it; it was created of some amorphous dark mass, and there was something wrong about the curves and angles of it all. It made her head hurt to look at it, so she closed her eyes a moment and looked down, her eyes following some of the pink foam as it dripped down and disappeared into the dark. Oh, she _knew _that there were horrible things waiting in the dark, big ugly terrible things just waiting to eat up people that were stupid enough to go walking into it… She shook her head once again. No. _You made a promise_, she reminded herself. _Mustn't--_can't_--run away._ Some more foam dripped into the dark, but the grin didn't speak or move otherwise.

"…M-Mr Fa-Fairchild?" she said uneasily.

The grin spread endlessly into the black space, and hundreds of multicolored eyes flicked open to stare at her. Morgan wasn't able to identify any of those colors--except for one. There was one slick, wet, violent-red eye floating several feet above her head.

"It _is_ you, isn't it?" she said.

"You're a sharp one, aren't you?" The voice came from all sides, a sultry, silken purr of a voice; it moved out of synch with the movements of the ugly grin. When it spoke, the dark simply pulled back to reveal even _more _teeth, all set in at jagged, impossible angles within the creature's awful gullet, disappearing into some inner blackness, and from in there a foul, unidentifiable smell emanated from it--perhaps the product of some gurgling grayish ooze that bubbled up from within its unseen body. "So! Our little game," he said pleasantly.

"Game?"

"Yup. Please--sit." A wooden chair appeared in the void. She poked at it suspiciously with one hand. It seemed solid enough. "I've been waiting."

"Have you, sir?"

"Oh, yes. I've been waiting for you to come to me after all, to beg and plead and bleed and scream--to beg for me to have mercy upon your miserable hole of a city and its idiotic people. So, you've finally come to do it, have you?" Fairchild chuckled.

"No, sir," she replied, trying to sound unafraid. The eyes, the teeth, the voice… she gave a small shiver. No. Mustn't. Even if she wanted to run away screaming into the night right now. Mustn't run away. _You _promised, she scolded herself, _promised Mr Moffat AND, by extent, the city… and all its people._

"'Sir.' That's so formal. I think we should go by first names, as we've been seeing each other so often. So tell me--what's your name?"

"I…" She squeezed her hands into fists. "I'm Sailor Epsilon, of course!" Yes. She was Sailor Epsilon, and shecouldn't be afraid, couldn't stand around shaking and quivering in terror. Deep in her heart, she wanted to just start screaming and never stop, run away into the dark and keep going forever, just to get away from the slavering, horrid grin in the dark and the rumbling voice… but she had to be brave. She had to act as Sailor Epsilon--as a hero would. She had to rescue her city and honor a promise she'd made to someone that was important to her. A little flicker of warmth pulsed in her chest. Heartbeat…

"Right you are."

She fidgeted in midair. "I… er… I've come to…" She squeezed her hands tightly into fists again. "Um. I wanted to talk to you, Mr Fairchild."

"Then talk, by all means."

"I would like everything in my city put back into its proper place and the people healed, if you please."

"You mean you haven't figured out how to dispel it or heal the people under the influence of their visions," Fairchild's pleasant, sultry voice said, dripping with sardonic amusement.

"If I must be honest--no, sir," she said honestly. "Mr Moffat and I tried our best… but I must admit we failed."

The grin in the dark grew once again. She ground her own teeth; her eyes watered slightly as she tried to force herself to face Mr Fairchild. This, then, was the thing she and Mr Moffat had seen pouring out from over the collar of the disguised Fairchild's fashionable leather jacket a few weeks ago--his true form? Was he just borrowing some poor man's skin while he walked around their world? Was this no-place _his _world? No time to dwell on idle thoughts like that. They weren't relevant to her current situation anyway. No. Had to focus on fulfilling that promise--_all _those promises she'd ever made Mr Moffat in the short time she'd known him--that she'd protect the city, that she would use her power responsibly, that she would come back safe and sound. Good girls--heroes--honored their promises exactly. And even if she hated it… Sailor Epsilon _was _a good girl, at the very core of her being.

"Your honesty impresses me, anyway. Shall I reward that honesty?" The creature was silent as it seemed to deliberate for a few minutes. She shivered, rubbing her upper arms again, forcing herself to stand up straight--like a lady--and face the thing in front of her. She retained her posture for about forty-five seconds, then slouched again, shivering. It was so terrifying in here. She just wanted to leave, wanted to be back in the light again, with Mr Moffat and egg salad sandwiches, libraries and museums, antique malls and pawn shops, radios and cameras, bicycles and trains, ideas and histories, science and art, and all of the other things she loved, all the things that she found comforting and familiar… "Hm. Well, I'll be fair this once. Live up to my false name. I'll answer _two_ questions about absolutely anything you'd like--past, present, future, the identity of your soul mate, the best stock tips, the winners of the next thousand horse races, the secrets of the universe. But only _two _questions. Choose wisely."

For a moment, Epsilon looked startled--that was shockingly agreeable of him; she wondered about his motive, and if he would tell her the truth should she ask him any questions--then deliberated for a few moments. Better to try and be answered with a falsehood than to not try at all and let a vital opportunity slip past. That seemed to be a logical answer--as logical as her mind could force through, anyway. She squeezed her arms tightly, steeling herself. Mustn't be afraid. At the very least, mustn't show it, not to _him_. Or _it_, rather.

"I wonder if it was you or if it was Miss Sigma that cast this spell," she said. It wasn't a question. She was formulating a little tiny plan in her mind, although she tried not to concentrate on it too hard, just in case he could see inside of her mind; she had a nasty suspicion that he could and would if he so felt inclined.

"That was Sigma."

"Please forgive my rudeness, but why did you need Miss Sigma to cast the spell? Don't you have your own phenomenal cosmic powers, Mr Fairchild, sir?"

"Of course I have. I'm just using Sigma as my pawn… a game piece, if you will."

"If you'll again pardon my rudeness, sir, I must say that if Miss Sigma managed to drive a city to the brink of madness under her own power--then what is your purpose? What can _you_ do? Can you actually cast spells like that?" Her voice was as it always was, soft and husky and polite, never rising far beyond a murmur; her expression was an innocent look of puzzlement.

"Of course I can."

"I wonder, though, sir."

A low, gurgling growl rumbled from the clenched, dagger-like teeth hanging in the dark. A puff of the pinkish foam fell from the edge of the mouth.

"Child, do not mock me. _I_ am the one who gave that little bitch her powers. _I _am the one who put this game into play. _I _have more power than you could ever imagine. I am beyond godhood. I am _power itself_, pure and infinite and dark."

"Yes, sir. But I wonder…" It wasn't an impolite tone; no, it was reverent and polite as ever; it was curious, inquisitive. "I wonder… what would happen if Miss Sigma started upstaging you at your own game? Would you be able to reverse her spells and take your proper place at the front of everything once more?"

"Of course I could. I keep her around solely so that I can listen to her writhing beneath my thumb. It's intoxicating, the kind of torture she puts herself through. And she _does_ so like spreading the misery at only a tiny nudge from me."

Sailor Epsilon tilted her head and said nothing for a few moments, then spoke again, still in a polite and helpful tone of voice. "I wonder, though, Mr Fairchild, sir. I think it would be something worth keeping in check… making sure that she didn't exceed her bounds. Like in chess. Check and checkmate, sir."

That low, gurgling growl again. Epsilon shivered a bit, trying to think of what to say next. This was all very unfamiliar territory, this mind-game stuff. She didn't like lying, and wasn't very good at tricking people. But as she didn't have her gun with her, mind games were her only chance--and vanishingly slim chances were better than no chances _at all_, weren't they?

Several uncertain moments passed. Epsilon had to grind her teeth and remain calm, trying to focus on things she liked about the world she was familiar with in order not to panic. Clocks, taking pictures, Sherlock Holmes stories, antiques shows, stained glass, hedgehogs, tulips, Beethoven's pastoral symphony…

At last, Fairchild spoke.

"You act as though you do not fear me, you miserable little worm. Why is this?"

She swallowed hard and decided to tell the truth. Most of it. "Oh, believe me, I'm _terrified_ of you, Mr Fairchild, sir--and of everything that's happened to me as Sailor Epsilon, and a lot of other things. But if you would pardon me"--here she curtsied politely to the ugly grin in the dark--"I personally hold to the thought that seeing is believing. If I were to see you override one of Miss Sigma's commands, I would be even more frightened, quite honestly."

An icy black wind whipped across the blank space around her; vaguely, distantly, she heard murmurs and wails and confused mumbling. The grin seemed to grow and become more deranged and awful, dripping some white ichor from the strange angles and corners; the eyes seemed to become sharper and brighter in the black, misshapen pupils contracting and dilating.

"All that fear and anger from Sigma's phobia attack… I've drawn it into myself. I have drawn from her magic, sapped it away--muted her power with my own. I have created a fear engine. That is something that a sailor soldier--blank or named--could ever hope to do, if it took all of eternity to try. Tell me now--_do you fear me_?"

"Yes, sir," she answered honestly. A shiver passed over Epsilon's spine, and it was completely genuine. She didn't know what on earth a fear engine was, or what problems it might have brought along with it. But there was the possibility, too, that he was making things up… just the same as she was. The truly chilling thing, though… was that he could negate Miss Sigma's powers--couldn't he conceivably do the same thing with her powers? Well… it didn't matter, anyway. She would find a way to seal him away or destroy him or find some other way to remove him from the picture. What mattered immediately was that she had managed to fool him into removing the haze that hung over Los Angeles--it was a victory for today. When she returned to the world she knew, she would concentrate on trying to find a way to victory for tomorrow. Ah, tomorrow…

"I hope you appreciate, Epsilon, that should I ever decide to use this fear-engine, it will be entirely upon your head--whether I use it on your piddling little rock or in another galaxy. You will be responsible for whatever phantasms it produces and for anybody it hurts. Keep that in mind." Another shiver.

But after awhile, she began to think hard about the next question she wanted to ask him, subconsciously, dimly grateful that he had been too keen on bragging to notice the mind-game she was desperately trying to play; he didn't seem to have noticed it at all. What other questions could she get away with? There were a million things she wanted to ask; it was tempting, having been given the chance to ask anything else, to know any one thing. Selfish things stood out in her mind. Did she have a soul mate--who was it, if she did have one? Would she find a career that made her happy? What kind of future did she have? (She had an ugly suspicion about her future… she concluded after thinking about this that it was probably best not to think about it anymore or to know for sure.) But… no. Epsilon shook her head. There was the voice of Mr Moffat in her head, scolding her gently, and a phantom hand resting on her shoulder, reminding her that she couldn't be selfish right now--she had to ask him about something that would serve the greater good, a practical question.

"Why?" she asked at last.

"Why what?"

"Just… why?" She scratched her head a bit, wearing an expression of confusion on her face--though this time, it wasn't quite as genuine as before. "I'd like to know the 'why' of all of this, please, sir. Why do Miss Sigma and I have our powers, why are you attacking Los Angeles, why are you here, why has all this happened?"

"Fair enough." The grin glittered in the black. Like the Cheshire cat, only even more malevolent. Sailor Epsilon tried to focus on the promise she had made to Mr Moffat, tried to avoid staring at the ugly pink-slavering grin… tried to avoid thinking too hard about the little trick she was playing on Fairchild, just in case he could poke into her mind and see it. She somehow had a suspicion that he could. "It's a game that I play, Epsilon. That's all. The game of stars. Stars are created at the same place in the center of each galaxy; some burn brightly and so become the memories of newborn planets--genius loci, taking the form of sailor soldiers--and others fade into the black, never to be seen or heard from again, too weak and afraid to exist, and so become no-things. True sailor soldiers are given names and those names dictate their functions and powers. Eternal wars and struggles prove the power of these newly-fixed stars. But until then… the crystals are blank, nameless, home to immeasurable, unimaginable amounts of power, of potential--free to have any design scrawled upon them. When I get bored, I sometimes play a game where I tamper with potential and possibility. Stars are born, stars burn out, stars collapse, stars become the darkness and the dust once more. It doesn't matter all that much to me what happens. What matters is that it's fun, and I enjoy toying with silly little girls like you, who fancy themselves the saviors of worlds. I like to see how they might come out in the end, should they survive that long. I loose the dark gods and foul beasts upon your world in order to see its people writhe and scream and torture themselves and their fellows; it's a delightful pastime. Los Angeles just happened to be the arena I chose for this round. There's no specific reason for it; one thing you learn in life is that there is no reason for anything at all to happen. It's a series of random coincidences. There is no such thing as destiny. Just potential. Just possibility. Games of chance, if you will. I've been around for a _very _long time, Epsilon, and I find ways to amuse myself. What amuses me most is seeing a world eat itself alive. The end… let it come as it will, in fire, or ice, or darkness. What did the universe ever do for me that I should mind its welfare?"

He smirked, expecting Epsilon to cry out something along the lines of, 'you're awful!' or start ranting about accomplishment and justice and love and other equally ridiculous human fantasies--the way that such vermin often did when he had them trapped. Expected her to writhe and wail and squirm and scream. Instead, a shocked, cautious smile played about her lips, then slid into a polite, slightly proud beaming.

"Thank you so very much, sir," she said cheerfully, offering him a most ladylike curtsy from her place in midair.

The grin fell for a moment, and a furious, foul snarl escaped in an unearthly voice that did not match the cheery voice he had been speaking with up until now. He had been _tricked_, and it hadn't hit him until just then, after he was done answering far more than the two questions he had allowed her. Not only that, he had been tricked into giving long, detailed answers, while she sat there in the midair, a polite, patient, attentive look on her round, freckled face.

"Well-played," he said icily--no. Darkly. He was _apocalyptically_ cross--but after a moment, the big, stupid grin reappeared and his voice became cheerily smug once more--although she knew better than to think of it as being genuinely cheery or friendly. "Yes. Well-played."

"Thank you, sir," Epsilon replied politely.

"I admire that little gambit, so I think I'll let you live for this afternoon. But do expect to see me--and Sigma--again _very_ soon."

She felt horribly dizzy all of a sudden. Millions of eyes and teeth and claws spun around her; eventually they all went completely black again, and--

---------------------------------------

Sailor Epsilon found herself jolted back into her regular body very suddenly, as if she had crashed back into it. Had she been sleeping? Had that visit with Mr Fairchild in the dark place been just a dream? She wondered what happened, blinking owlishly.

After a moment, she looked around. People were up and walking around now. Some were sitting together with Sally and Mitch, the paramedics they had come upon earlier, expressing pure bafflement over what had just happened. Some were helping with moving debris and tending to others' injuries, ignoring their own personal confusion and trying to help alleviate all of the chaos and destruction that had happened within the course of a very bad day. It seemed as though the city had waken up from a hellish nightmare, and was going about its morning washing-up.

"You're awake," Moffat's voice said. His face entered her line of vision; she was apparently lying down on the blacktop. The fellow she had tried reading the mind of was gone. She slowly realized that her head was resting on the pavement between Mr Moffat's knees, steadied and kept stable--the proper first aid for someone who might have a possible head or neck injury. Had she hit her head? She couldn't recall, and her head didn't hurt; it didn't feel as though it were bleeding at all--not to mention her neck felt fine, if a bit stiff from being in the same position the whole time. Epsilon sat up, scooting away a little bit, face red, while Mr Moffat stood up, stretching, as though he had been sitting there in that position for quite some time.

"Um. Yes, sir." She twiddled her index fingers together and looked around again, still slightly dazed and a wee bit dizzy from sitting up so suddenly. "What happened?" She couldn't quite remember; when she tried, it came back muddled and murky, a dark whirl of random deep voices murmuring about stardust.

"Fuck if I know. You were tryin' that mind-reading shit like you'd planned, and all of a sudden, you just passed right the fuck out."

"Did I?"

"Yeah. Just kind of crumpled, was all. You're lucky I was around to catch you," he said, "otherwise you would've busted your goddamn skull all over the pavement and I would've had a hell of a time cleaning it up." He patted her on the head.

"So. Um. What else happened?" she asked, still a bit confused. He shrugged.

"Dunno. People just started waking up, lookin' around, and started picking their shit up, just tryin' to help us with what we were doing. It was pretty sudden, so I guess you did work something out. Good job on that, whatever you did."

"I think…" She tilted her head and thought long and hard, concentrating on whatever had happened. She smiled shyly and twiddled her index fingers together. "I think I might have lied to him. Um. Tricked him."

"Who?"

"Mr Fairchild. The fellow in the leather jacket. Um. Except he wasn't a fellow in a leather jacket that time. It was really dark and--and--" She shuddered violently upon remembering Mr Fairchild's truer shape. Now it seemed as though she couldn't _stop_ shuddering and shivering. She had had to force herself not to do that when she had faced him in--person? well, however she had faced Mr Fairchild--because she didn't want to give herself away, even though she _had _been terrified. At that time, she had had a promise to fulfill, something to focus in on to avoid looking frightened. But now… Now, it seemed that she was catching up to how absolutely terrified she had been.

"I don't envy you anything right now, Morgan. I really don't," he said, rubbing one of her shoulders with his hand. It was somehow comforting, a strangely grounding influence. "Now, the big question--have you gone all batshit on us?"

"I don't think so, Mr Moffat, sir," she said.

"Quiz time, just to make sure. What's today's date?" Regular first-aid procedure, checking out awareness levels of the patient. He'd kept her head steady, just in case she'd muddled it up on the way down when she'd fainted. She seemed okay now--as she was up and moving, at least--but it was best to double-check after such a long period of being out.

"October 4," she replied.

"Do you know where you are right now?"

"Los Angeles. Although I'm afraid I'm not sure what street this is off the top of my head. I've never been in this part of town before."

"What's twelve times twelve?"

"Um." She tilted her head and drew out the figures of the problem in the air in front of her, silently mouthing the steps of solving the problem. Moffat hated it when people did that. He wasn't sure why, but it just got on his nerves. Sure, he understood that not everyone could do the kind of math he could right off the top of their heads, but he thought that the world could be spared the goofy math-mime act. "One hundred and forty-four," she replied.

"What was the last thing you ate before you passed out?"

"Egg salad sandwich and grape pop, sir. You made it. I remember."

"Hm. I think you're okay. No hard knocks to the head, neck's still in its proper alignment, memory's okay. You seem just the same as you were. Good." He ruffled her hair and grinned in that lopsided way of his. Maybe this weekend, he would go and get a new ribbon for her hair. She didn't look quite right without it. "Do you want to go home and rest for the night, Morgan?"

"Um." She looked around at the activity, the clean-up going on. People were moving debris away, helping to load the injured onto stretchers if they weren't too scuffed-up themselves. Some more emergency services people had shown up and were assisting the normal people. But it looked as though more could be done. Of course--the hallucinogenic fits had caused half the city to lose its goddamn head. There had been a lot of property destruction, and there were lots of people that had been injured. She wouldn't be able to forgive herself if she just went home and napped while other people worked themselves to the bone to fix things. Nice girls didn't lay about being lazy while other people did hard work; it simply wasn't the way things were. And besides which… who knew if her apartment building was still standing? It might have been rubble, for all she knew. "If it's all right with you, Mr Moffat, I'd like to stay and help some more." He shrugged.

"Just as well." He nodded in the direction of the car he'd driven them there in; she followed his gaze and sighed in mild annoyance when she saw the car. The entire front half had been crushed by flaming debris sometime during the period she had been out. Moffat had gone to the trouble of pulling her gun out of the backseat, but it looked as though they'd be walking home tonight, should they decide to go home--assuming, of course, that they still had homes to return to. He wondered again how she managed to carry that Gatling so easily; when he'd lifted it, it was like trying to lift a five-hundred-pound barbell or something. Eventually, he'd just settled for dragging it across the pavement the best he could, and so it lay over to the side, unscratched, undisturbed, ready for Epsilon to pick it back up any time she needed it.

"Thank you very much," she said awkwardly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She seemed to have a lot of random nervous habits and tics, he noted. Her face turned red, and her voice returned to its usual tone--just above a mumble. "And. Um. Thank you for keeping an eye on me while I was out. You didn't really have to--" He waved a hand dismissively.

"Never mind that. Come on, let's go help those folks, and you can tell me about the epic battle I missed out on while we're at it."

"Yes, sir," Epsilon said, smiling gratefully and nodding. She would have to think up some wonderful way to repay him, wondering what sorts of things he liked. But for now, she focused on trying to help the people moving the debris looking for any other people who might have been injured, hoping that they didn't find anybody dead. Sailor Epsilon was afraid of corpses. There was just something utterly _wrong_ about dead things, and she didn't fancy trying to drag a broken and battered dead body out of mangled cars or crumbled buildings.

They didn't speak very much while they worked--largely because Epsilon was occupied with huffing and panting and making strange little squeaks of effort as she tried to help Moffat and other people lift debris or move mangled cars out of the way. She wasn't a very fit girl, subsisting as she did on a diet chiefly composed of ramen noodles and free day-old cakes from her former workplace. Still--she was trying her hardest. It was all that she could honestly do, all anybody could ever hope for; it was what she always did.

After awhile, Epsilon's arms became tired, and her back was aching. Moffat looked at her and opened his mouth to ask if she was okay, if she wanted to sit out and rest for a bit. Seeming to know what he was about to ask, she shook her head. He raised an eyebrow.

"I--I'm going to try to use my powers. Take some of the weight off of everyone. If nobody else minds," she said. The other two people helping Moffat and Epsilon shrugged and moved out of the way to help some other bystanders with their respective tasks. At first, they had questioned what Sailor Epsilon was and how she could do the things she did, but in the midst of all the rush, they seemed to have lost interest and were merely concentrating on their work.

Epsilon concentrated on work now. She had seen this kind of thing in a story once, where a girl could lift things with her mind. Perhaps if she could use her powers to do the same thing, then she could lighten the load for everybody and make the work go more quickly and efficiently. She had powers--might as well use them for the good of everyone around her. Not just to attack things crawling from out of nightmares, but to make lives easier and better. A nice girl did that, after all--went out of her way to help everyone. It was something Epsilon was very used to. Helping. Like a good girl. A nice girl. She wasn't terribly fond of being a nice girl--in fact, she hated it; there was no room in a cutthroat modern world for nice folks. But even if she didn't _like_ it, she was rather stuck on it and couldn't force herself to change--though she had tried numerous times. She had, upon originally obtaining her powers, thought about trying to build an alter-ego that was dangerous and exciting and adventurous--like Catwoman or the Huntress--but that was something simply she hadn't been able to do after all. It troubled her slightly, admittedly.

Still. Mr Fairchild had said that sailor soldiers like her had infinite amounts of power at their disposal. It was best to use it for something useful, something good, wasn't it? She frowned in concentration, moving her hand slowly. The chunk of debris lifted and floated in midair, following the motion of her hand, into a pile of debris in the center of the street. It worked. She smiled to herself; she hadn't been entirely sure that it would. But it was best to practice, to come up with more practical spells--more good magic for the good of the world.

The work went quicker after this. More people were freed to work with people who had been injured or trapped elsewhere while Epsilon moved rubble and masonry away, piling it into the middle of the street. That would probably be a problem later, but for now… until they could figure out some other wise and practical solution, it would have to do.

The sun rose over Los Angeles once more, on a city half-ruined by madness. It would take a lot of work to return it to its former glory. Moffat hoped that the populace was up to the challenge of doing so--hoped that none of them would suddenly lose interest in it and abandon the project. He was generally a sort of pessimistic man, but in his heart of hearts, he _did _hold some stupid glimmer of hope that perhaps, having experienced such a terrible disaster, the city would band together and make it the most beautiful city in America--make it _better _than it had been. Cynicism--though he preferred to call it _realism_--told him that this probably wouldn't happen, though. The cynicism/realism was borne from years on the job--how many times had he seen people fuck up their lives after having been given numerous chances to make it better? Still--he wouldn't have been a policeman if he didn't have the hope to change things for the better in some small way or the other. He didn't fancy himself a superhero or anything--all he could really hope for was to influence at least one person to make some happy change in their lives and make something good of themselves. He would sometimes, with permission from his superiors, write to people he had arrested and jailed and ask how they were doing, and he would save the letters they wrote back, if they contained good news. Lots of people took up cooking and decided they wanted to be great chefs instead of prostitutes or drug dealers or whatever, and they were doing well. Cooking seemed to be a popular choice for a new path in life, he'd noticed, and he didn't blame 'em. It was a relaxing activity; it was one of his own hobbies (though he didn't quite have the hang of baking yet).

Looking around at the people banding together to help just right now, though, he hoped he was seeing a flicker of a good future for the whole city, not just individuals.

He was probably wrong. He knew that. But he could still hope. No law against hope.

---------------------------------------

"Master--what's wrong?" Sigma asked, clinging to his arm. A worried expression was spread across her face. He had been silent for hours. At first, he had been Out, doing something--though, as usual, she didn't know _what_--but now he was back. She could tell. And he had been in a furious temper all night. She didn't dare go to sleep without at least attempting to comfort him; she wanted him to smile at her and speak to her in that silky, wonderful voice of his, telling her of a wonderful future, a world made safe for the people who had been forgotten and gotten lost. She would sit quietly at his feet and listen to him for hours, soothed by the beauty of his words, the splendor of the visions he spun for her.

But he was still silent, scowling, his dark-brown eyes (though she thought, for a moment, that she saw that peculiar crimson flaw in them) shining in the half-dark. Sigma nudged against his shoulder affectionately. She didn't dare speak again for quite awhile--not while he was in such a foul mood. If she spoke again, he might have shouted at her, and she didn't want to be shouted at by such a precious person. She didn't want him to threaten her with replacement again. Instead, she continued to nudge and nuzzle against him with great affection and worry. Her scaly claws felt some burning heat underneath his skin, which was peculiar for two reasons. She had become used to the ice-cold of his skin brushing against her own, where she still had normal human skin; the new hands she had grown back after the incident in the shopping mall felt nothing except the heavy weight of the dry, thick, armor-like scales. The ice of his skin was similar to the ice-drop that she felt in her heart when she woke up from dreaming of that dark and cold place that seemed to occupy her dreams increasingly these days. She didn't know anything about that dark place, and when she asked Mr Fairchild, he refused to answer her, instead grinning his handsome cat-grin and saying things like, 'that's a story for another day,' or 'wait.' So she had stopped asking after it. But this burning sensation of his skin… it was unfamiliar, and she wasn't sure what to think of it, whether she liked it or didn't like it, or whether it was better or whether it was worse than the icy feel he usually held.

It was a very long time before Mr Fairchild reacted in any way--before he spoke or moved. She hoped that he would notice how she had never left him alone, that she had been trying to comfort him the whole time, that he would smile at her and tell her she had done a good job and then tell her to do something to make herself useful. At last, though, a vicious smirk spread across his face, and she smiled in response.

Indeed, Epsilon _had_ tricked him today, and in doing so, won a piddling little self-claimed victory--but that didn't matter jack shit in the grander scheme of things. There was still a game to be played, and his pawn was still on his side. She would always be on his side, ready to cause any amount of disaster and death if he just asked.

For now, he would just plan his next moves.

He would win this game of stars, of course. He often did. It was just a matter of planning, of how vicious one could be in order to win.

Soon, he would lead all of the players on the board to complete and utter ruin.

Yes, soon.

Fairchild looked at Sigma, whose enormous rough, scaly hands were wrapped around his upper arm. Soon, too, there would be another task for Sigma to carry out. A very important thing to carry indeed.

He turned his face towards hers and flashed a horrible vicious smirk at her, full of far too many sharp and jagged teeth.

For now, though… a bit of fun with Sigma. He would listen to her silent whimpers of agony as he had his fun, and those would comfort him greatly. Oh, well he knew that she wouldn't question him aloud, and she wouldn't shudder or whimper when he touched her with his long, cold fingers, but he knew she wanted to. He knew, too, that she was terrified of him, and so didn't really like him very much--but when he ordered her about, she felt important, like she filled some purpose to _someone_, and that was better than being _no one_, being forgotten by the whole world. That was why she had stayed at his side, why she was doing everything he demanded and more. He could see it in her eyes and hear it in her mind, as loud as anything. He would lay out what he wanted from her, and she would immediately say 'yes, Master' and roll over for him. Didn't matter what it was. If he said he wanted something done, she would do it, and she would hate herself for it deep inside. Never coerced her, never forced her. Merely asked, and enjoyed the torture she put herself through in order to be important and useful to someone, even if he was a complete monster not so deep down--the devil in sheep's clothing. The truth didn't set her free. It never would.

But it sure made _him _feel better.

And _that_ was what was important.

---------------------------------------

"…Yeah."

Moffat ruffled the hair at the back of his head, staring at the pile of mangled metal and charred siding. It had once been Morgan's home--up on the third floor. Tiny place, not in a particularly great neighborhood, the building not in particularly great repair, but it had been livable. She hung her head and heaved a sigh, not saying a single word.

The cleanup was going well as it could, but Moffat had to finally insist on taking her home, threatening to handcuff her if she didn't go get some rest. Signs of strain were beginning to show, and he had wanted her to sleep it off before she hurt herself or anybody else.

Trouble with this, though, was that she apparently no longer had a home to return to--as it had been a casualty of the fire that had finally been doused hours ago. There was still a bit of smoke rising from the rubble. Moffat ruffled the back of his hair again.

"Uh--you could come crash at my place, if you like. Well--assuming I've still _got_ a place, of course. I've got one of them couches with a bed in it. Save you a few bucks off of a hotel, since…" He shrugged. She remained silent, but her face turned red. "Since you got sacked and all."

"H-how'd you know that, Mr Moffat?" Morgan looked up at him.

"I ordered a cake for delivery from that place and they said they'd fired their only delivery girl, so I had to go pick it up myself. Kind of a raw deal, that."

"Oh, yes--I'm sorry. I'm sure you were busy that day," she said, bowing her head and trying to give him an apologetic smile.

"No--I mean your getting fired."

"Oh."

"And anyway, that cake was awful. Who the fuck puts _vegetables_ into cakes? Vegetables don't belong in cakes! I asked for a goddamn chocolate cake and they put chocolate and _zucchini _in it. What the fuck?" He looked at her and shrugged again, putting his hands in his pockets. "Well, anyway--my door's open, if you want someplace to crash."

"Um. Yes, sir--thank you," she mumbled, giving a tiny nod.

"Right. We better start walkin', then." She nodded again, and she followed along beside him. He hummed and mumbled snatches to a song as he walked. Eventually, he spoke plainly again, in his typical dry, deadpan voice. "I got another proposition for you, Morgan."

"Ehh?"

"What's say we partner up?" She gave him a very strange, bewildered expression. "What? Don't give me that look. Just sayin', what if I pulled a few strings and had you come on as a sort of police consultant?" The police department could have used someone like her around. Maybe she wasn't entirely lion-hearted, or tough, or driven by a thirst for justice--but she _was _a hard worker, with extremely useful abilities, and moreover, she _was _a girl in need. And Moffat just couldn't say 'no' to a girl in need.

"Consultant. Like Sherlock Holmes." Morgan finally smiled a little bit; it wasn't a big one, but it was an honest smile, something he was happy to see.

"Sure, why not?" He didn't know much about Sherlock Holmes; while he liked reading, he wasn't particularly fond of detective fiction. He was also quickly losing his taste for horror and science fiction, although he had once loved both genres, and he knew exactly why. Too familiar with the reality. Once this shit started happening to you every other day or so, you had to find somewhere nicer to escape to. Lately, he had been taking his scholastic refuge in technical manuals and travel guides. "Anyway, bat it around awhile and let me know."

"Yes, sir," she said. She wasn't showing off any of her weird nervous habits--that finger-twiddling thing, or chewing just that one fingernail, or fidgeting--at the moment, so that must have been a good sign. "Um. Is there anything you'd like me to do while I stay at your house? I could clean while you're at work, or make breakfast every morning."

"Whatever makes you happy, Morgan."

"I just don't want to be any trouble--I mean, I don't want to be in your way."

"I wouldn't mind if you were," he said, grinning in that lopsided way of his. "Only thing I ask is that you don't try to play with John Lee."

"Who?"

"Burmese python. Lives in the guest room. Which is why you'd be sleeping on the couch."

"P-python?" she repeated incredulously.

"What? I'm allergic to furry little critters, but I wanted some pets for company. So I have a snake and a turtle."

"Wh-why a python, though? Couldn't you stick with a cute little garter snake in a terrarium?" she asked.

"No."

They shuffled along in silence--or near-silence, as Moffat took up humming quietly to himself again--for nearly an hour. They were getting into what would have, in better times, been a slightly nicer part of town--comfortable middle-class suburbia, with neat little houses with neat little lawns. That's how it was normally, anyway; right now, it was looking a little worse for the wear, but still livable, more so than Morgan's usual residence. At the very least, it didn't look as though Moffat's house had been leveled, though there was a lot of stuff that didn't belong there strewn on the meticulously-kept lawn, and some of the windows were broken. Easy fix, all of it. At least this time, he'd have a friend to help him. Yeah, he could say that. Friends, of a sort. She was a nice enough girl, and it'd be nice to have that kind of company for awhile--as long as she felt like sticking around, anyway.

"Welcome home. It's kind of a dump right now, but it ain't usually like this. Really, it ain't." He unlocked and pushed the door open, holding it open for her. She nodded at him, stepping inside to kick off her shoes; she didn't want to track mud or ash into his nice house, and her shoes were covered in it. "Thanks. I'll go pull out the couch-bed for you."

"I'd rather stay up a bit, Mr Moffat--so I can help pick up around the lawn and fix the windows," she said, fidgeting. Morgan wanted to be a good guest; after all, hospitality went both ways between the host and the guest.

"You need to sleep," he said stubbornly. "I think you've been up for nearly twenty-four hours now."

"I _was _asleep for awhile, sir," she pointed out.

"I don't think that journey to the center of the mind counts, Morgan. You need some rest." He led her through the kitchen, around a corner, into an ivory-carpeted living room. There was a TV with some videogame console or another in the back corner, near a sliding-glass door; there was a little terrarium with the turtle inside on the right wall near the TV; and there was a hunter-green sofa up against the wall that it shared with the kitchen. Moffat moved the coffee table from in front of the couch and put it near the bookcase on the wall to the left, then set to work pulling the bed out. She reached to help him as well, but he waved her away impatiently. "I'll figure it out. Just give me a minute here."

Morgan shifted about awkwardly from foot to foot. He was right, she supposed; she could have used some sleep. Still, she felt a creeping guilt at the fact that she would be napping while he cleaned up his yard and boarded the windows, and while others would be hard at work cleaning up the rest of the city. But Mr Moffat was the authoritative sort, and it was probably better not to sass him, as he _was _being terribly gracious and hospitable in opening his home to her--and she didn't have anywhere else to go, should he become cross with her and rescind his offer of shelter. She scratched her head a little bit. What would make her a better guest? Helping him clean up, or doing as he said and napping a bit? Etiquette was confusing sometimes, especially since she wasn't used to sleeping at other people's houses, and was thus not terribly familiar with the rules governing a hospitable guest.

"Ow!" he hissed, pulling his hand away from the metal frame of the couch-bed. It had pinched his finger tightly between a little joint he was trying to snap into place for stability.

"Are you all right, Mr Moffat? Are you sure you don't need help?" she asked.

"I'll be fine." He waved a hand away; there was a bruise on one of his fingers where it had pinched. "You know, you worry too much. You should relax before you go screamin' straight into a nervous fuckin' breakdown. Last goddamn thing I need on my hands."

"Yes, sir. I'll try," she said, smiling.

"Good." He pressed down on the thin mattress of the couch-bed; he wished it were a bit thicker, so as to be more comfortable, but he couldn't find a new mattress for a couch-bed anywhere. "Looks to be sturdy enough for sleeping right now. I got a ton of pillows in the hall closet if you want 'em," he said. She nodded and sat down on the bed. The springs squeaked and groaned under her; she looked around nervously. "Get some rest, huh, girly?"

Moffat left, going around the corner into the kitchen and back out the front door, and she bounced on the mattress a little. It didn't seem as structurally sound as he seemed to think. Still… it was somewhere, wasn't it?

She got back up, then walked down the hall to get a few pillows. He hadn't been kidding. There were two towels and a spare washcloth on one shelf; every other conceivable space was stuffed full of pillows. She picked up a couple of them, squeezing them to see which ones were softest. After a couple of moments, she found two of the most suitable and shuffled back to the couch-bed, lying on her side and curling up tightly.

Morgan tried to remain awake, so that she could have been around to help Mr Moffat with anything he required, but despite her efforts, fell asleep almost immediately.

While she slept, she dreamed of the dark, warm place again… The dark place changed in every time she dreamed of it. Sometimes there were golden or silver flecks at the edge of the black horizon. Stars, probably. Sometimes they were nearby, very large, very bright; sometimes they were more distant, and she just hung in the dark, in a warm golden bubble of energy--like the forcefield that she would sometimes equip Mr Moffat with during fights he insisted on tagging along to. It was as though she was simply floating slowly through space. Was she searching for something? Maybe something was searching for_ her_, or using her as a search tool. She wasn't sure of the answer, if there was indeed any sort of answer to be found. She liked these dreams, though they didn't make a whole lot of sense to her. They were relaxing, peaceful, and the imagery was so vivid and awe-inspiring. An adventure in slumberland. Slightly more pleasant than the adventures she had in waking hours, admittedly.

Warmth--power--bubbled and churned in her heart, and in her sleep, she smiled, burying her head into one of the soft pillows. Moffat returned, saw her passed out on the couch. He noted that he should buy some ear-plugs in the future, as she was a snorer, and rather loud about it. She rolled around onto her other side, springs squeaking and creaking, and snorted, mumbling something in a nonsense language. He couldn't identify what language it might have been, hearing no familiar sounds. But it sound like a proper language, instead of just random sleep-babbling. Weird. Moffat shook his head and shuffled down the hallway into his own bedroom, closing his door.

It had been a very hard day for the both of them, after all, and both of them deserved some rest.


	9. Sunny Afternoon

_**Sunny Afternoon**_

There are some peculiar days in the universe--exceedingly rare--when everything is at a lull and nothing much happens. The hell-beasts and eldritch abominations nap their aeons away; the villains of the worlds decide to retire and plan their empires. The lull days are just too good to pass up, and it seems that the entire universe just decides to take a day off from all it's been doing. Suns still rise, worlds keep spinning, and life goes on; it just seems that it goes on at an easier pace, if just for a day, and it seems the world relaxes its cruelty just slightly.

Of course one must always remain on their guard, watch out for those sudden harsh things that the universe always eventually throws at one.

But any being would be excused for wanting to take a brief respite, a day to rest their weary bones and worn-out mind.

It was Officer Moffat's day off, and he was dead-set on relaxing and enjoying it. He had gotten up around 9:30 in the morning--that was 'sleeping in late' by his own standards--shuffling out of his bedroom clad in bathrobe, jockeys, and slippers, pondering what the day ahead of him would be like, assuming that nothing tried to demolish the city and its citizenry this afternoon. He sort of missed lazy days. Before he had fallen in with Morgan and the whole horrorshow, he had spent his days off lazing about in his shorts, drinking coffee and playing videogames. The last two--well, what did you call 'em? Battles? Confrontations? Adventures? Disasters?--had taken place on days he had off. The majority of those two days had been spent trying to kill a load of goddamn zombies or keep the city from eating itself alive. Granted, both days had started off with a trip to the beach with a very nice girl, which would have been relaxing, but they'd wound up horribly in the end. _Here's hoping for a real day off today_, he thought. He got the feeling that that sort of hope was going to be futile, though.

"Good morning, Mr Moffat," Morgan said. He looked up, blinking.

"Yeah." He sniffed the air and detected a familiar smell. It brought to mind Saturday mornings as a kid back in Boston. His ma had taught him how to make pancakes from scratch. Never made pancakes from any of the shit from the store. Just good old-fashioned hard work. It produced great food, better than the kind of stuff you usually got from just slopping mix into a pan. Good times. "What are you up to?"

"Just trying to make a bit of breakfast." She smiled and fidgeted. Morgan stood in front of the stove, gamely trying to make pancakes.

"Awful nice of you." He sat down on a barstool--it creaked a bit under his weight--and leaned against the island in the kitchen. "You don't have to."

"Well… I'm your guest, and long-term guests should do their best to help their hosts during their stay. It's only what's polite. And pancakes are about the only thing I know how to actually properly cook," she said apologetically, scraping a misshapen pancake off of the frying pan and onto a paper plate. Moffat slid off of the barstool, shuffling over and taking the paper plate from the counter. It had been stacked high with slightly blobby, deformed cakes--but he didn't care too much about presentation. It all went to the same place eventually. Who gave a fuck, as long as it tasted good? "You're welcome," she said, smiling.

"Yeah. Thanks." He took a fork from one of the kitchen drawers, then returned to his barstool, slouching forward onto the island as he began to eat. "Pretty good," he mumbled, mouth full.

"Thank you, sir." She smiled brightly--happy to be complimented--and started on a second batch of them, humming something to herself quietly. The man got up again and shuffled to the refrigerator, taking out a jug of orange juice and drinking directly from it, not even bothering with the glass. Morgan frowned a little bit, but refrained from saying anything.

"About this 'sir' and 'Mr Moffat' shit--call me Ian, huh, Morgan?"

"Eh--"

"You're a nice girl, Morgan. I like you, and I'd like to be your friend." He grinned, in that peculiar lopsided way of his, while she tilted her head curiously.

"I… I'd like that," she agreed. After another moment's consideration, she nodded a little more confidently. Though she wasn't entirely sure about what constituted friendships between adults--as the last real friends she had had were from back in eighth grade or so, when sitting at the same lunch table and discussing Harry Potter books was a good grounds for friendship. That felt a bit shameful--twenty-one years old, her, and she'd never really had any true grown-up friendships. It struck her, too, that she didn't know much about Mr Moffat; she knew that Mr Moffat was a good man, plainly, if not the most gentlemanly sort--she knew his personality and his profession, but she didn't know anything else. Shouldn't friends know more about one another? Dreams, hobbies, past, future… those kinds of things?

"And friends can call each other by their first names. Right? So call me 'Ian' from now on." He capped the orange juice jug and put it back in the fridge. "So what were you gonna do today?"

"Um. I could make lunch later… or perhaps clean up your backyard. Or practice with those magic spells, just in ca--"

He waved his hand for silence. "Now, none of that." She gave him a puzzled look. "Officer's orders. Unless an emergency demands our attention, I want you to just relax this weekend."

"Yes, sir," she said, smiling nervously. The man grinned, shaking his head, then went back to his barstool and his pancakes. Instead of slouching over the island counter this time, he sat back, swiveling around a bit. She determinedly avoided looking at him. Awful rude, lounging around in one's underwear in front of lady guests. At least he was wearing a bathrobe over it, but still… The last sloppy pancake fell onto the paper plate, and she picked the plate up.

"You know what your problem is, girly--you're just too fuckin' nervous all the time. Just kick back, read a book, watch TV, or something. What do you normally do on lazy days, huh?" he asked, speaking with his mouth full of half-chewed pancake once again. Unseen, Morgan grimaced a bit--she hated it when people chewed with their mouths open or talked with them full of food, as it was simply nasty and immensely rude--then turned around and shuffled to the kitchen island to sit next to him.

"Well… I read. Or do crosswords. Or walk around taking pictures of nice gardens. Nothing terribly exciting or interesting, I'm afraid, Mr--er, Ian." She wished she could have come up with a really cool lie that made her sound more intriguing. Robot-building, perhaps, or basketball, or something. The most intriguing hobby she had an interest in was building model train sets, but she simply didn't have the space or money (especially not _now_). She took a small, polite bite of her breakfast, glancing at him.

"I don't do anything interesting or exciting on my days off, either. I get more than enough excitement at work. More of it lately, really." He shrugged. "If I'm really on the ball, I'll come out here and play Guitar Hero for a couple of hours, or I'll give the turtle a cuttlebone to play with, so he can get his calcium, and watch him play with it awhile. 'S pretty cool." He ate his last bite of the pancakes, slid off of the barstool, and tossed his paper plate in the trash before turning to scrub the fork clean at the sink. After he deemed it sufficiently clean, he put it in the dishwasher. "It's good--healthy, like--to have a relaxing hobby, considering all the batfuck crazy shit that we do. If we ran around being adventurous and exciting all the goddamn time, we'd go nuts, the both of us."

She smiled a little at this, swiveling around a little bit on her own barstool. "So… what all were you thinking of doing today, I-Ian?"

"Dunno. Maybe I'll laze about watching the idiot box, maybe play a few rounds of Guitar Hero, maybe go out to take a walk. Just depends, is all."

"Oh."

"You're welcome to do whatever you want. Join me on a walk or play some games or whatever." He stretched. "I'm gonna go take a shower right now, though." She nodded.

With that, he shuffled back to his bedroom, presumably the master bathroom, and Morgan was left alone. She finished her pancakes, threw away the paper plate, and scrubbed her fork clean, putting it in the dishwasher, just as her host had done. She returned to the couch-bed and sat down on it, looking around; the springs squeaked and jounced her about. Without her books and camera and crossword book--her usual pastimes--she didn't know what she was going to do today. This was, of course, also assuming that there wasn't another monster roaming around the city or another hallucinogenic haze driving people to vicious fury or a zombie plague or anything. Briefly, Morgan wondered if, right now, there was anything, unseen and unknown, creeping around the city. She fidgeted a bit, and the couch-bed squeaked some more, and her thoughts turned to all the things she had lost in losing her apartment. Her camera--not the fanciest model in the world, but it had been a Christmas present from her mother, and she liked it--all her books, her clothing, her little shower radio… Everything she owned was gone, save the clothing she wore, a wallet with nothing but an ID, a library card, and her glasses. And considering her unemployed state, and the current economy, and the fact that if she _did _get hired somewhere, she would likely have to keep skiving off to fight horrors and never be able to explain those absences… Subconsciously, she started chewing on a fingernail, worried. Considering all of that, she would probably _never _have all her favorite old things back, or be able to buy nice new things for herself.

There _was _the proposal that Mr--_Ian_, she corrected herself; he wanted to be called by his first name--had made yesterday… but who knew if Ian had the ability to pull those strings? What if he couldn't come through, despite his best efforts? Of course Morgan knew that he would do his best--he always did, it seemed--but hard work didn't _automatically_ mean success.

Ian shuffled back in presently, his hair still damp from the shower; he was now dressed in a blue-and-white LAPD T-shirt and jeans, for which she was profoundly grateful. "What were you thinkin' of doing today, huh?" he asked, producing a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans.

"Um. I _would _sort of like to go out shopping today… seeing as these are the only clothes I have now…" She tugged at the edge of her own sunny-yellow T-shirt.

"Hadn't thought of that. Going by yourself, then?"

"I'd probably get lost. I'm not that familiar with this part of the city…"

"Then I could go with you, if you'd like. Or draw you a map. Whichever." He placed a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and dug around in his pocket for a lighter.

"I wouldn't mind it if you came with me," she said, smiling nervously.

"Got nothing else to do, so I might as well. I need some more orange juice, anyway." He lit his cigarette. "By the way--if my landlord drops by, you never saw me smoking in here. Okay?"

"Yes, sir."

"I usually don't do it in this house, or didn't, because of the rent agreement I signed with the landlord. But lately… all the stress…" He shrugged. "I just decided, hey, fuck it. I'd be practically livin' in the backyard if I kept going outside to smoke at this point." A worried look passed over Morgan's face, but she didn't say anything out loud. "Come on, then." He cut through the kitchen, picking up his keys from the kitchen island, Morgan following along behind him. They would have to walk this time. He hadn't had time to scour Craigslist to obtain a cheapish replacement car yet; he would put it off until tomorrow, or perhaps even Monday. For right now, he simply did not want to bother himself with reality. Thinking about getting that replacement car would have inevitably led him to thinking about work and about the horrible things that he and his new housemate fought, and that would just stress him out some more. And hadn't he just gotten done scolding her, telling her to relax a bit? So he would relax, too. Take a walk out in the mid-autumn sunshine, go get some orange juice, maybe chat with Morgan a bit, get to know some more about her.

Once the door was locked behind them, he pocketed his keys and shuffled to the edge of his yard, checking the mailbox to see if there was anything waiting for him. But there wasn't anything at all. That was good. He blew a smoke-ring as he walked.

"Nice day out," he commented mildly.

"Yes, sir--a very nice day indeed," she agreed. Ian chuckled and shook his head.

"One day, I'll get you to stop callin' me 'sir.' Mark me."

"I'm sorry. Force of habit." She smiled a little bit.

"Oh well. Up this way. There's a little strip mall with a Target up here." He motioned with his cigarette in his hand. "Assuming it's still there after yesterday, of course."

"Do you think we should go hel--"

"Morgan. I appreciate a good work ethic as much as anybody--shit, probably even more--and I appreciate _you_. But you and I both need to rest before we fuckin' snap. Especially considering the shit you and me work with. It seems like we're the only ones who can fight back against this shit and prevent the disasters from reaching too far, and it's important our minds are rested and calm, so we can stay rational and on top of shit, instead of panicking and being a constant case of nerves. Shit, I'm surprised neither of us is totally batfuck insane yet." The man thought for a moment, then nodded. "Then again, maybe we _are_, running _into_ that kind of shit, instead of running away from it and hiding, like normal people would." He sighed and shook his head. "So. We got an understanding, girly? No more talk about work today, unless there's a pressing emergency, in which case we'll run right out and fight like hell. Okay?" Ian took a drag off of his cigarette, then flicked it onto the pavement and crushed it out with his foot.

"I just don't like sitting around idle. I always have to be doing something," she said. "It really bothers me when I'm just lazing about."

"There's a difference between laziness and well-deserved rest," he pointed out. She nodded, sighing resignedly.

There was an awkward pause.

"Where are you from, anyway?" Morgan asked randomly. "I've been trying to figure out since you first spoke to me." She smiled apologetically. "But I just can't _quite_ pin it down."

"Can't you?" He laughed; it was a gruff, rasping, but genuinely amused sound. "Boston, born and raised. But I can't fucking stand snow and ice in the winter, so I moved out here as soon as possible. It's nice--you know, aside from the hell-beasts attacking every week or so. That can be kind of a downer."

"Sort of."

Ian looked thoughtful for a moment. "But I wouldn't move for anything, even so. I like it here." That was the truth. The weather was generally pretty okay, the people were okay (if a little misguided sometimes--but the same was true of everybody on the planet), and he liked big cities. He didn't want to live anywhere else in the world. That was part of why he was a policeman. Nobody was gonna fuck up _his _city, nor any of _his _people--whether it was the mayor, the movie star, the McDonald's fry-cook, or the homeless junkie on the corner. He took his job very seriously, because he loved his city and the people in it. And that was part of why resting was important--so he could step back and reflect on why he liked this place so much. It wasn't paradise by a long shot--sometimes it could be downright hellish on particularly bad days--but still, he liked the place, and wanted it to thrive.

After thinking for moment, Morgan nodded in agreement. She liked it there, too, and like her friend, wouldn't have moved for anything. It was an exciting place. Perhaps not a very _kind_ place, but it was a lively sort of place; it was a place with little rhyme or reason, a city that had just sort of _happened_, rather than being planned out the way most cities were. The people populating the city were mad as a brush, the lot of them, and that made them interesting. Everybody--everything--had a story here, and each story was wildly different. A far cry from her hometown in Ohio--where everybody seemed to have the exact same story and the exact same dreams. Dull. Who, in their right mind, would want to live in a place like that? No, she liked the daftness, the lot of it.

And besides, it was just like Ian had said. She hated snow and ice, too. "Where are _you_ from?" he asked her.

"Hilliard, Ohio."

"Ah! Wholesome Midwestern girl. I knew it." He grinned.

"Um, thank you, sir." Her face turned pink; she wasn't sure what else to say in response to it.

Around the corner and down the street. They were approaching the little strip mall; Morgan had to walk quickly to keep up, as Ian took rather long strides. She searched her mind for another interesting conversational topic, trying to veer clear of anything related to their work; she wasn't very good at talking to people. It occurred to her again that it was an awkward thing, with Ian. He wasn't entirely a stranger, but he wasn't entirely a close _friend_, either. While she knew his personality, and felt, quite certain, that he was a good man (if gruff and impolite), she didn't know much _else_ about him--didn't know about his memories of the past or his dreams of the future, his hobbies, or anything like that. Shouldn't real _friends_ know stuff like that?

"What else do I need?" Ian said to himself aloud, scratching his chin. "Orange juice… maybe some paper towels… shoe polish…" He glanced at his temporary housemate. "Any requests over there?"

"No, sir," she said, not wanting to be demanding or intrusive. He shrugged.

"Guess we can go grocery-shopping properly later on. I was thinkin' of making stuffed peppers sometime this weekend, 'cos I've been craving them, but I need the peppers themselves." Her stomach growled, and he snickered. "Not enough pancakes this morning, eh, Morgan?" She smiled sheepishly at him.

"So… you like cooking?"

"Oh, yeah. Loads of fun. It's kind of a hobby, I guess you'd call it." He gave a big lopsided grin. "Usually I just go ahead and make fucktons of food for just myself and have dinners for a week ahead of time. But I look forward to having someone else to cook for, at least for a little while. 'S a bit like being an actor and finally having someone to see you do the monologue you've worked on so hard."

"The egg salad you made yesterday was quite nice. It had a bit of a bite to it, which I liked a lot."

"First thing I ever learned how to make, and a pretty safe bet if you're bringing something to a picnic." Ian turned his current cigarette around in his hand. "Here we are, then. Let me finish this."

They stood at the entrance to the Target, which seemed to be operating normally. It seemed as though this part of town hadn't taken as much damage as Morgan's part of town. Of course neither one of them could have explained why this was, as neither of them were sociologists, psychologists, or even profound philosopher-types. Maybe Miss Sigma just hadn't covered the area evenly enough. At any rate, Morgan was grateful to see that something operating normally, even if it _was_ just a Target store; she wondered if it was arrogant to think so, but the thought came through anyway--it was something that _they _had saved, something that _she _had managed to protect with her power as a Sailor Soldier. People had lived and people were recovering the best they could. People always did just that, didn't they? The best they could manage. And that was all one really _could _do.

"Would you like me to get a cart?" she asked.

"I don't care." He shrugged and crushed his cigarette out on top of a little sand-bucket in front of the entrance. "Depends on how much you're getting. I can just carry the shit I need."

"A basket, maybe, so we can make it easier on both of us?" she suggested. He shrugged again as they went inside; Morgan picked up a little red basket near the dollar section and brought it with her as they walked on. "Do you think anything's gonna happen today?" she asked. He shrugged.

"Don't worry about it. Like I said, if something happens, we'll take care of it, but until then, just concentrate on living your life. We only get one go-round, so try not to fuck it up." He smiled instead of grinning this time. "I worry about you, you know."

"D-do you?" she asked, blushing.

"Damn straight." He grinned slyly, and Morgan wasn't sure of what to make of it. She dismissed him as meaning nothing by it.

He _was_ right, of course, and that was a mite annoying. Even if it wasn't _much _of one, Morgan _did_ still have a life to live outside of being Sailor Epsilon; underneath it all, underneath the powers and the costume change, she _was _still only Morgan MacBride. Really, she didn't _have _a double life, or a secret identity (per se), because she was always _herself_, no matter how annoying that was sometimes. One life. That was all she had been given, same as anybody else in the entire world. Only one chance to live only one life; since she wouldn't get another shot, it was best to just concentrate on living it. It didn't matter whether she was acting as Sailor Epsilon or as Morgan. What was important was never losing heart, to keep living with nobility and grace. Strength, if she could muster it at all. To do the best that she could to do some absolute good in the world. That was the absolute best that anybody could do with everything that they were given, right? Even if it looked bleak, that was what was most important. Hard work and nobility. A ripple of warmth ran through her chest, that bubbling golden feeling from when she dreamed… as if it were telling her 'yes' and giving her some kind of encouragement…

Distantly, she heard him speaking, and she returned from her thoughts, shaking her head. Her mind had not only wandered, but gone away on a short weekend trip, overnight bag in hand. "I'll be over getting my shit together," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"Oh--yes--I'll see you in a little bit, then." She smiled at him sheepishly again and ducked into the ladies' plus clothing racks, disappearing amongst the dresses and trousers and T-shirts.

He waved and left to fetch his orange juice and shoe polish and paper towels. That Morgan. She was a good girl, and he quite liked her, but he _did_ worry. Girly was gonna bust a blood vessel if she didn't stop worrying at all hours of the day. That was something that he had learned to accept years ago. He was a policeman, and this was very central to his life and to his personality. But sometimes, he had to stop being _Officer Moffat _and just be _Ian_ awhile. One simply couldn't--and didn't _have to_--run around enforcing the law twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week--no matter how great that would have been. You had to press on with business as usual, live a normal life, too. Otherwise you'd fuckin' snap like a twig. Shit, it was bad enough for _him_, during business as normal. Worrying about what might have come up next. Junkie with a knife. Outnumbered by vicious gang members. Trapped in a burning house after rescuing an old lady from a fire. There was a lot that could have happened, a lot of things he had to worry about. But worrying was pointless. What mattered was situational awareness, practicality in caution and in resolution. Once you trained yourself not to _worry_, life became a lot easier. Gave you a lot of breathing room, like.

It wasn't the same as recklessness, mind you. He still concerned himself with a number of things. He simply did not let those things _control_ his life; hey, fuck, why should he? It was _his _goddamn life, and he had to be the one who said what happened. He dealt with his problems as they came at him, one at a time, and kept himself collected and practical when considering solutions for those problems. Saved him a lot of unnecessary stress, and therefore saved him a lot of money on bottles of bubble bath.

"That's something else," he said to himself, aloud. "I need some more bubble bath." He cut across an aisle, on his way to the pharmacy section, surveying the selection they had. Surprisingly fancy shit, for this being a Target and all. Burt's Bees, some fancy mint-chocolate-chip-scented organic three-in-one blend… Ian uncapped the mint-chocolate-chip-scented bottle and sniffed it. Didn't smell like it to him. Recapping it and shelving it, he moved on, considering the bottle of Burt's Bees bubble bath instead.

--------------------------------------------

When they met back up, Morgan was already sitting outside, her back against the uneven brick wall. She was slowly working her way through a bag of gummy worms, humming to herself. He couldn't identify the tune, but it seemed a nice one.

"Didja get everything you need, then?" she asked cheerily.

"And a few other things, yeah. What about you?" Ian knelt down and took a few gummy worms from the bag as she held it up him, offering some. "Thanks. I like gummy worms." He put two in his mouth and started chewing them. "Anywhere else you want to go, while we're out?"

"No, sir," she replied.

"Right." He stood up straight, helping her to her feet, and they started back towards Ian's house, the plastic bags ruffling in the wind as they went. "So what are you gonna do when we get back to the house, huh?" Morgan thought a moment, then smiled sheepishly.

"I think I'd like to take a shower and change my clothes, if that's possible."

"No problem there. Just don't steal any of my bubble bath."

"Bubble bath?" she repeated, an expression of perplexed amusement on her face. He seemed far too… too… _manly _to take bubble baths; really, she had kind of figured he was the sort to shave with a battleaxe and gargle with sulfuric acid, and that maybe dirt simply avoided him out of fear. If she didn't know already that he was such a good man, she would have honestly been a bit frightened of him; he was a big fellow (a head taller than she was), with a deep, deadpan voice, a guy who ran into battles with unspeakable abominations from beyond the edge of the galaxy, armed with nothing but determination, a handgun, and perhaps a canister of pepper spray. A fella like cut a pretty intimidating figure, was all.

Knowing all this, it was odd to find out that his hobbies included cooking and his preferred method of coping was with bubble baths.

"Good for relieving stress, you know," he said as he dug around in his pocket for his cigarettes.

"I suppose so, but…"

"It makes me seem less manly. I know. I don't fuckin' care. They're soothing, and I like 'em."

"Perhaps it makes the activity seem more--erm--manly when _you _do it--by association," she suggested with another little chuckle.

"That's exactly what it does." He grinned broadly and patted her shoulder.

The rest of the walk home was quiet. After they had finished the bag of gummy worms she had bought, Ian concentrated on smoking his cigarette; when it was finally smoked down, he flicked it away, crushing it out with his toe on the driveway in front of his house. He dug his keys out, unlocked the door, and held it open for his housemate.

"Thank you," she said as she stepped inside. She returned to the couch-bed to neatly fold the spare clothing in the plastic bags, humming that unidentifiable song as she did so. Ian walked around into the kitchen to put the orange juice in the refrigerator.

"What _is _that song, anyway?" he asked.

"Hm?" Morgan peered around the section of wall that the kitchen and the living room shared.

"That song. You keep humming it. Just wondering if it was your favorite tune or something, was all."

"Oh?" She smiled sheepishly. "It's silly, really, but… um… I hear it when I dream, and I like it. I don't know where it's from otherwise, though…"

"Oh." He shrugged.

"What do you dream about, if I may ask?" she asked, leaning on the arm of the couch and resting her head on her arms.

"I barely fuckin' remember." He put a loaf of bread into the bread-box next to the refrigerator. "But when I _do_ remember, it's usually nothing good."

"Nightmares, you mean?" Morgan frowned, wondering what kind of nightmares would scare _him_.

"Naw. Just boring shit," he lied, not wanting to burden her with worry over the horrific and disturbing nightmares he had sometimes. "Like standing in line at the bank or something. What a fuckin' letdown. Dreams are supposed to be interesting and exciting, aren't they?" A cabinet creaked open, then thumped shut after he put a box of poptarts in. They weren't any good for him, of course, the poptarts, and he certainly got up early enough every morning to make himself a proper healthy breakfast. He just liked them, that was all. Sometimes, junk food was just the thing he needed to pick him up. "I should be dreaming about cooler, more exciting things, like--I dunno--making krakens into sushi with a bowie knife or something." He put the paper towels on the kitchen island, then shuffled into the living room. "What else do you dream about, beside that song?"

"Um. It's kind of weird."

"Dreams are supposed to be, aren't they?" He flopped down on the couch next to her. His dreams were certainly weird--full of night-gaunts and crawling things and eye-screams. Weird… but they _were _just dreams, no matter how terrifying, and they were best forgotten afterward. They didn't mean much, really.

A little smile. "Promise you won't laugh if it sounds silly?"

"I'll try not to."

"Thank you, sir," she replied, a hint of a dry tone to her voice. She tilted her head, trying to figure out how to describe the dream. "Well… it's not entirely a recurring dream, because it's a _little_ bit different every night. But there are always a lot of similar things, too. Every night, it's this big dark space, and sometimes there are gold or silver… stars, I suppose--sometimes they're big and very nearby, and sometimes they're really far away, so they're just speckles on the horizon. And there's always the song--it has words, too, but I don't understand them, so I can only hum a little bit of the tune. What I remember of it. And all throughout it, I'm orbiting these places in this golden bubble."

"So you have dreams of floating through space." She nodded. "I once had a dream about space. I was, like, four, and I dreamed I was an astronaut repairing something on the outside of a spaceship. Some asshole came along and cut the cord, so I went flying off forever, and didn't wake up for a long time, like you usually do after having a nightmare. Scared the ever-living shit out of me, so I scrapped my dreams of being an astronaut early and settled on being a policeman instead."

"I wonder why _all _of my dreams about space just lately, though. Used to be, I had a lot of dreams about stuff like steam locomotives and Brazil and candy and talking cats, but now I never dream about anything else--just space. I miss all my other dreams." Ian thought for a moment, tapping his fingers on the arm of the couch.

"Maybe it's like Fairchild said--about stars and shit. Maybe he didn't mean it quite so metaphorically as we thought…" It was quiet for a moment as both parties pondered this.

"That sounds silly, if you don't mind my saying so," Morgan commented, before frowning slightly. "Then again… perspective, really. Considering all that we've encountered recently…"

"Yeah, I've found that my threshold for what I consider ridiculous has gotten rather higher as of the past couple of months, since reality as I've gotten familiar with it seems to have given up and gone home." He shook his head, sighing, but Morgan nodded in agreement. There was a long pause.

"So… You always wanted to be a policeman?"

"Yup. Wouldn't do anything else, not in a million years. It just wouldn't feel right. What did you want to be as a kid?"

"I… I wanted to be a superhero. Like Zatanna from the comics. Funny how that all worked out, wasn't it?" she chuckled, with perhaps just a slight tone of bitterness underneath it.

"Oh, I think it worked out pretty well. Though you haven't got the tophat or the tails or the fishnets." He looked her up and down carefully, then grinned lopsidedly. "No great loss, though. I think you look cuter in the sailor costume."

"Er--thank you," she said, blushing and desperately trying to think of another topic that would have been less awkward. "Are you going to dress up as anything for Halloween, Mr Mof--Ian?"

"I could always go as a policeman. I don't care that much, really. I never put a lot of thought and effort into my costumes at Halloween, even when I was a kid. Too much bother for just a few hours' worth of wearing it."

"Really?" she asked. "I spend days designing and sewing my costume." She didn't want to tell him any of the reasons for her Halloween enthusiasm. Upon review, playing them out in her mind, they _did _all sound very pathetic and childish. Best they not be shared, really.

"What were you working on this year?"

"A Red Riding Hood outfit." Of course, now it was just so much ash in a pile on a burned city block somewhere in Los Angeles. A pity, that. It had been shaping up nicely. All those sore, pricked fingers for nothing! She had never been able to figure out sewing machines, so she did her sewing entirely by hand.

"You could always just morph into Sailor Epsilon and demand your candy in that outfit."

"That would be simply lazy," she said. "And I think the seven-foot-tall Gatling gun might put people off of giving me sweets, and instead put them onto calling the police, who might not all be as forgiving and kind as you are."

"Fair enough." He tapped his fingers on the arm of the couch again. "You bored as I am?" She sat bolt upright and bowed her head slightly, giving him an apologetic smile.

"Oh--was I boring you? I'm terribly sorry, Ian--I didn't mean to--"

"No, you weren't boring me. I'd like to continue our chat, in fact. Idle hands do the devil's work, is all. D'ya play chess?"

"I'm not any _good _at it, but I know how," she replied. Trivial Pursuit was more her game; she was good at remembering interesting facts and figures, but she wasn't good at strategizing, which was the central focus of chess. Not to mention that she always felt like if she took too long puzzling out the next move, her opponent would become impatient and cross with her. Ian stood up.

"Good. I'll set up the board." He disappeared back towards the bedrooms, but returned in a minute or so with a chessboard, setting it down on the coffee table gently, as not to break it, and started taking out the pieces, setting them in their places. The chessboard was quite old, it seemed, with the paint flaking, the wood looking a bit battered. The pieces seemed to be much newer and fancier than the board itself; Morgan rather liked their design, and had to suppress a giggle when she saw them. Of course Ian wouldn't have anything else: the pieces were carved to look like cops and robbers. No need to guess which side he was going to pick. He sat back down on the couch.

"You're the cops' side, aren't you?"

"Always." There was a long pause while he considered the opening move. Finally, he moved a pawn one square forward. "We're nuts, the pair of us, aren't we?" he said conversationally. It wasn't really a question. More of a solid statement.

"We most certainly are. Must be. I'm afraid there's really no other word for it," she agreed cheerfully. It was quiet for awhile; after about a minute, she moved a pawn forward.

"Do you wish it were different?" he asked. "Just out of curiosity." More quiet as she considered his question. That was certainly a question with a million different answers. Things that could have been improved, things that could have been worse. "Because sometimes, I'll look at you to see how you're doing, and you'll look tired or afraid. Like you'd rather run away. But you never do. You never even try. Even though you _could_. Shit, you could _fly _away." Morgan tilted her head, thoughtful, then slowly shook her head no.

"I don't think I could, sir," she mumbled softly.

"Huh?" He frowned a little, then moved his pawn again.

"Well… I mean… Of course I'm absolutely terrified. I'm very much afraid of the dark. I don't like creepy-crawly things, or things with big teeth or too many eyes. I _want _to run away sometimes. Most of the time, being honest. But I don't think I _could_." She chewed on an index fingernail. "It's silly, you see."

"Sane, is what I'd call it."

"Is it, Mr--Ian?"

"Sure it is."

"I don't know how being a coward would make me sane," she said, looking confused.

"It ain't cowardice. I'd call it sense. Shows you're not completely off your rocker, in that you still have the ability to be afraid of things that you goddamn well _should_ be afraid of. And you're brave enough to stand up to it." He motioned towards the chessboard. "Your move, Morgan."

"Oh. Yes," she replied, distractedly. She tilted her head and tried hard to focus back on the game. "Um. If you don't mind my asking, Ian--why do _you_ do it? I mean--why do you keep charging into all this headfirst, when you could just run away and be safe? You haven't even got magic on your side."

"Didn't you hear? I'm a fuckin' mental." He chuckled. "Besides, I have got magic on my side. _You're_ on my side." Morgan smiled nervously and moved a knight forward. "The honest answer, though, if you really want to hear it, is because I'm a policeman. It isn't just my job, it's my life." He scratched his chin as he considered his next move for awhile. "I wouldn't be able to run, either. I just couldn't." She tilted her head a little bit as his hand hovered over a piece, then drew back. He shook his head. "No, not that one," he mumbled to himself.

"You seem to always know exactly what to say. Is that something they teach you in the police academy?" she asked with a lopsided smile. "Or d'ya have ESP?"

He finally moved a different piece and flicked his eyes up at her, a sly smirk crossing his face. "I'm a very talented man, Morgan." _What an awfully obtuse reply_, she thought. He chuckled. After a moment, she decided he probably didn't mean much of anything by it; probably he was just teasing her somehow (though she wasn't sure how, or what, specifically, he might have been teasing her about, and that bothered her slightly). Morgan moved her next piece.

About fifteen minutes passed in silence. A clock in the kitchen ticked it away loudly; outside, a truck rumbled past. Pieces were moved across the chessboard, and pieces were taken and stacked up around the edges of the board--there were notably more robber pieces piled up on Ian's side.

"Supposing…" Ian said. He closed his mouth again and tapped a finger against his lips thoughtfully.

"What's that, I… Ian?" The man was quiet for another moment or two.

"Nothin'." He shook his head and moved a bishop across two squares.

"You said 'supposing'… I'd be interested in hearing what you happen to be supposing," she said, genuinely curious. He seemed to be a secretly introspective sort of fellow. Possibly possessing ESP, maybe, of a sort.

"Just… supposing that if what Fairchild said isn't just some loopy metaphorical flowery bullshit."

"All that stuff about stars and power and names and stuff?"

"Supposing you do become one of these star-spirit-things, Morgan. What star do you think you'd be? And what do you think happens once you become one of these star-spirits?"

"I don't know, sir." She chewed on a fingernail, then smiled brightly. "I bet _you'd_ be Jupiter. You strike me as very Jovian."

"Why's that?" he chuckled, moving another piece and taking one of Morgan's knights to add to the pile of captured robbers on his side of the board.

"Well--you're a big fellow, if you don't mind my saying so. And it seems like a place of strength and courage, does Jupiter."

"Aside from the noxious atmosphere and constant million-mile-an-hour windstorms, that is."

"Maybe on one of the moons. I bet you'd survive, though."

"Ganymede, maybe. There's ice there, I think. Still, the atmosphere would present certain issues. Check."

"But Ganymede does have an oxygen atmosphere, even though it's a thin one," she pointed out. "Europa does, too. Sort of like Mars, except smaller."

"I wonder if the planets of our solar system are already spoken for, in terms of this star-spirit thing. Dunno if we could find out, really." She moved her king out of danger for the time being and waited for him to consider his next action. Instead, he studied her for a moment, which caused her to fidget a little, then shrugged. "I dunno what planet you would be. I can't think of any particular planet or star that might fit you. Not right off, I mean. Largely because I don't remember the names of any stars, except the _North _Star."

"Oh." Embarrassingly, she found herself slightly disappointed that he couldn't come up with a prediction for her. Did that mean she was nondescript or boring? Then she shook her head. It wasn't something to get too worked-up over, after all, all this becoming-a-star business. She had no part in Mr Fairchild's silly 'game of stars,' no matter what delusions that repulsive creature might have harbored. She wasn't playing in his game, because his game didn't matter. Her concern was of protecting her world, of protecting tomorrow.

"I bet you'd be a bright star, though." He grinned. "Whatever else, you'd be a bright one. Checkmate," he added.

"Ohh." She smiled good-naturedly. "I thought I almost had it."

"Not remotely, I'm afraid. Another game?"

"If you'd like," she said agreeably. "I'd like to have another chance at winning one."

"Tell you what, though--I'll give you a consolation prize this time." Ian got up, momentarily disappearing behind the wall that the kitchen and the living room shared, only to come back a moment later with a strip of sunny-yellow fabric in his hands.

"A new ribbon?" she said as he dropped it into her hands. "You really didn't have to, you know." He nodded.

"Call it a reward from a thankful citizen."

"Thank you very much," she said, smiling brightly as she tied it into her hair. She didn't tie it in quite the same style as the original; where the original ribbon had two bows done up at either side of her head, she tied this one so that there was only one smaller bow in the center. Ian sat back down and started setting the chessboard back up, smiling inwardly. It was a lot of things, that ribbon. A gesture of thanks, a gesture of friendship, something to complete her look--hey, it offset the glasses and freckles nicely, and she didn't look the same without it--but most of all, it was something to make her smile--not in the nervous, hesitant manner she usually smiled in, but an honest, eager way.

Two more games of chess, a spirited attempt at playing some multiplayer games on the Nintendo Wii (Morgan, it turned out, was simply awful at playing videogames, so she was content to simply sit and watch her housemate play by himself), a lunch composed of fried bologna sandwiches, a meeting with the pets in the spare bedroom--well, the turtle, anyway, as Morgan was afraid of snakes, and especially afraid of really _big _snakes--catching an episode of Mythbusters…

But most of their afternoon was passed sitting on the couch in the living room, simply chatting away, the pressures and stresses of Officer Moffat and Sailor Epsilon forgotten, if only for a moment, in order to focus on the wondrously, beautifully mundane lives of Ian and Morgan. They spoke of their favorite bands, the television commercials they hated with a furious passion, things they had done as children, hobbies that they enjoyed in the present, what could have been, what they wished for in the future. The conversation was stumbling and slightly awkward… but it was a step in the right direction.

Morgan glanced up at Ian, who swore loudly as the figure in the game he was currently playing died, and smiled a little bit, applauding him politely. _Friends_. He was a good man, and now… maybe… a good friend. She liked the sound of that.

"The computer is a cheating bastard," he muttered as he clicked off the Wii and the TV and returned to the couch, flopping down.

"I'm sure you'll get it the next time," she said encouragingly. "That's the best way to attack these kinds of things. Take a break, come back to it later. It's how I do the more difficult crosswords."

"Yeah, you're probably right. Still. The computer _does_ cheat." He brushed a lock of dark hair out of his eyes. "You've been smiling a lot more than usual today. I'm glad."

"I guess today's just been a very good day," she said, face turning slightly pink.

"It really _has _been." Ian grinned. "I've really liked hanging out with you today, Morgan. Hope we can do it more often in the future, if you've no objections to it." He thought about giving her a hug, but then thought better of it and patted her shoulder instead, getting another smile and a nod from Morgan.

It was a lazy day, when nothing happened. Hell-beasts didn't try to consume the city; the citizens went about their lives as normally as they could after the previous day's disaster; and two friends simply sat on a couch, enjoying the day that they wasted together.


	10. Have You Seen the Saucers?

**_Have You Seen the Saucers?_**

The sky captures the imagination of the world below the way that nothing else can.

It's a beautifully lonely place, looking up from here. All you can see are the cold, distant stars, billions of miles away; they flash and blink, as if sharing some arcane message with some unseen, unknown correspondent. A distress signal? A love letter? A secret? A wish? Nobody quite knows the ways of stars.

In truth, it's not nearly as lonely as one would think. Think of the cosmos, the ever-expanding, eternal universe. Isn't it arrogant to assume that, of all this vast, unknowably vast space, that the humans on the planet Earth are all that's there? That they're the pinnacle of all creation?

Of course it is.

If that were the case, I would have to say that the universe aimed very low and settled for very little.

The fact of the matter is that there are numerous creatures that live out among the night--floating in the darkness between the stars, backlit by the shifting light of strange suns, crawling across the surface of the living planets, burrowing under the craggy skin of dead places, dancing at the outer edge of time-space, or worming their way into the center of infinity.

Some of these amazing civilizations are so small that one could find certain difficulties in saying whether they exist at all; the most powerful of our microscopes here on Earth would not be able to magnify their cities enough so that we could see them clearly. But nonetheless, they live their lives. They sing their funny folk-songs; they form tight-knit societies; they build their families. They look up at the distant stars and wonder "what if?" They dream.

Some of them are enormous, the size of entire planets. They have horrific visages; they have the wrong angles and curves; they fill more dimensions than space actually has. To call them "gods" would be incorrect; to call them "demons" equally so. Such titles imply that they have some real role or purpose, or that they have some specific designs upon the worlds they encounter. This is untrue.

These beasts drift about space with no purpose other than existence; they seem to be mindless, though one could hardly tell. But perhaps on some rudimentary level, perhaps they dream, and perhaps that is what moves them from planet to planet on their eternal journeys.

A lot of these beings--vast or microscopic or human-sized--travel, floating aimlessly through the darkness between stars. Perhaps it is in search of a better home. Perhaps it is merely out of curiosity. Whatever the reason, periodically, they pay visits to the planets beneath strange suns.

Unfairly, most people who claim to have seen UFOs or atmospheric beasts in the skies over Earth are brushed off as lunatics or dismissed as hoaxers. But one must consider the caliber of people who have reported such things. Police officers. Soldiers, the world over. Pilots, both military and civilian. Astronauts. People who are selected for their positions of authority, largely due to their mental stability, tip-top physical condition, and above-average eyesight--people who would have quite a lot to lose if they were found to merely be participating in a silly hoax or a prank. Certainly, there are people who like to stir up trouble by claiming outlandish things. But when you consider the cases of the astronauts and pilots and policemen… you begin to wonder…

Some people know.

Most observe the skies and share the information between one another, and that is all they can do. They are powerless to defend their world against these strange things, should the atmospheric beasts mean harm. They merely gaze at the heavens and hope, lacking the ability to do anything else.

But there are a few people who do have the ability to protect their world. Most have gone forth to explore the distant skies, becoming the spirits of their own stars. Some, however…

* * *

"I have a secret place I'd like to show you." Fairchild smirked in his perfectly handsome way.

"A secret place," Sigma repeated, smiling behind one enormous, inhuman hand. "It sounds nice."

"You bet."

"Where is it?"

"Didn't you just hear me? It's a secret." He chuckled. "But I'll take you there, if you close your eyes." For just a moment, Sigma hesitated, but then closed her eyes and covered them with her scaly hands for good measure. "Now keep your eyes closed until I tell you otherwise. Understood?"

"Yes, master." She felt an arm, unnaturally long, snake around her, wrapping up her shoulders and her midsection tightly. Against the thin fabric of her sailor uniform, it was cold, heavy, and various, shifting and churning around with that awful force against her body. His skin was always cold as a corpse's, but there were periods when his touch was even worse, when it seemed to crawl and twitch in a thousand different places. The first time she had felt it, she had yelped in horrified surprise; while she had gotten a little more used to it in the intervening period, she still had to try very hard to suppress the shudders that she got when his skin was like that. Sometimes it was merely cold and placid; other times, it was pulsing and twitching with some awful dark life of its own. There seemed to be no pattern and no predicting it.

A whiff of sulfur, a feeling that her body was twisting at impossible angles, inside of a tiny, ice-cold tear in the world. The twisting and wrenching pain robbed her of her breath; she gasped and choked, grasping at her throat with her inhuman claws, trying in vain to wring another breath of fresh air out of her lungs. Involuntarily, her eyes opened, and immediately, she regretted it. A strangled gasp escaped her, and Fairchild looked at her, grinning in amusement. For a moment, it looked as though he flickered and shifted in this strange, cold space. His shape changed into some black, various, amorphous thing with too many grins with too many teeth; then he tightened back up into the shape with which Sigma was familiar. Space ruptured and tore around the two, and she landed roughly, skidding across the peculiarly spongy, soft ground on her hands and knees. She gagged for air and found that it was thin, but breathable, here. Her breath adjusted accordingly, though her breath was still short and terrified.

"Now what did I tell you?" Fairchild chuckled. Sigma whimpered; it was the only sound she could make. He nudged her in the side using the toe of his boot. "Get up."

She choked out an affirmative response, though she couldn't quite manage words at the moment. The woman staggered to her feet, swaying slightly, and looked around at her new surroundings; her master's jump through space had brought them to a desolate place, and it reminded her of the moon, though it couldn't have been the moon, as she couldn't see the Earth on the horizon in any direction, nor could she see the sun in the distance. It was a dark place, lit only by the dull, pale glow of the strangely spongy, bouncy ground. The glow was occasionally broken up by thick, formless ink-black shapes; at first, she figured they were rocks, but after staring at them for several minutes, squinting, she could have sworn she saw the rocks twitching and pulsing. But perhaps it was only the weak light--perhaps her eyes were playing tricks on her.

"Where are we?" she squawked out hoarsely. She didn't really have to ask; somehow, she already knew what it was. Even if it didn't look like one… it was a graveyard--or something pretty similar, anyway. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and a shudder rocked her body. Sigma crossed her arms and lightly squeezed herself with her claws.

"The end of several worlds." He smiled, looking up at the emptiness of space. There weren't any stars in sight. There was only this little graveyard planet, floating alone in the darkness. "Buzz Aldrin once said that the moon held a magnificent desolation about it. If your planet's sorry little moon warranted magnificence, I think this place warrants something more like 'majestic.' I like the sound of that. Yeah, that's it." He laughed. "This place is majestic. It's one of my favorite places in all of the miserable cosmos. That's why I like sharing it with the people that I meet."

Sigma nodded idly, squeezing her arms again, then looked towards her master curiously. "If this is the end of worlds, where do they begin?"

"It depends," he said. That seemed to be his final answer on the subject. "Shall we explore a bit?" She loyally followed him as he strolled off. Again, she found that the ground was strangely bouncy, rather like walking across an enormous trampoline. As she walked, she slid and stumbled, partly from lingering dizziness and partly from the slick, slippery ground; she wished that she could walk with the same grace that Fairchild had. He walked in smooth, confident strides, hands in his pockets, humming some song she couldn't recognize.

"Um. Do all… worlds… come here when they die?" she asked. She didn't quite understand it when he started rambling about worlds and stars; it all seemed very philosophical in nature, and she didn't care very much about philosophy. It was a boring subject, no matter how much one prettied it up with flowery symbolic language.

He stopped next to an irregularly-shaped pit in the ground and leaned over it. A low gurgle came from inside; standing up straight, he kicked one twitchy 'stone' into the pit.

"Not all of them, no." There was another gurgle from the pit. "This is just the place where failed stars stumble off to die. They could never build up the strength to become, so they just give up and spend forever fading away. The stars that do become, though--they're given the curse of rebirth for eternity. Imagine how dull that must be. Enslaved in the same role for however long your star-stuff exists, never given the option to change or to die." Sigma pondered for a moment, then nodded. He was probably right. "Not that I envy them death. I couldn't imagine dying; I imagine being dead would be even more dreary and monotonous than an eternity of rebirth, and if there's one thing I cannot abide, my dear, it's monotony."

"Of course, master," she said, smiling. "It's boring."

"Precisely," he chuckled, patting her on the head. She hugged his arm, leaning her head on his shoulder. They walked together, following the curvature of the small, dark planet. She stumbled and slid across the slimy surface as they went along, but managed to pull herself back up using the man's arm.

"Do you think I'll become a star, master?" she asked after a long silence.

Fairchild chuckled again, but didn't give a proper answer.

He knew, of course. Knew that Sigma wouldn't ever become a star. She was far too weak; she had no will of her own. Everything came about because he ordered it of her, because she was simultaneously terrified of and obsessed with him. Terrified of his power and the cruelty he displayed (he knew, too, that she admitted this in some place in her shallow little mind), obsessed with the attention that he displayed towards her (and in that same place, she would think, 'negative attention's better than no attention at all'). It was a double-edged knife, one that she seemed content on repeatedly stabbing herself with.

But even though he knew all of this, he saw no reason to tell her about it. It would be loads funnier if she tried to force stardom on herself, if she were desperate to avoid a fate resigned to squirming in the half-living flesh of this dying planet. She'd whip herself into a frenzy and then shrivel up and blow away to the outer edge of the cosmos, burnt out and forgotten even by time, despite all her best efforts to be remembered, to matter to someone. And as soon as he was finished with her, he, too, would forget her and move on to his next toy.

Yeah.

That would be more fun to watch.

He grinned.

* * *

Millions of light-years away, on the planet Earth, perhaps two dozen people were parking their cars on a hill outside of the Los Angeles city limits. There had been increased sightings of UFOs, cryptids, and other inexplicable things in the city over the past few months, and they were interested in finding an explanation for it. If no explanation could be find, they would have liked to make first contact with the creatures in the dark, smog-choked skies over southern California. They were members of the West Hollywood Paranormal Research Club; all of them were sensible, straight-faced people, curious, wanting to solve some of the more important mysteries. The field trip to the outskirts was simply a consideration of practicality; it was darker out here, and so they would be able to see their quarry more quickly and clearly, if there was anything to be seen at all.

Before they had even started setting out their equipment, they saw. Soon, they forgot all about recording the encounter; they were too dumbstruck by the sights and sounds they discovered.

A rust-colored beast crawling out of the dark side of the moon, flashing an ugly snarl at its adoring audience. Numerous glowing eyes flashed along its spine, and it drooled a sticky, nasty blue liquid all over the ground at their feet, gnashing a dozen rows of stained teeth. As soon as it had appeared, it vanished, diving around the back corner of a car; it might have only been a particularly vicious hallucination.

An ugly sound, with no visible cause or owner; it pained each man and woman to hear it. It was a cry of unimaginable pain and suffering, tempered with an edge of stupid, vicious glee. They were not so certain about the theory of mass hallucination now. The sound stuck in their brains like a knife, repeating itself endlessly.

A spinning star-shaped object, flailing wildly across the sky and blacking out the warm golden light of the City of Angels. It lowered itself to them, so that they could see, and it breathed and pulsed and twitched as it ran its tendrils over their faces. They saw hundreds of angry, horrified inhuman faces reflected in its glass-smooth skin. The club members blinked, and then stared back out at the world they had known. For a moment, they were frozen with terror… but soon began to struggle and panic as thick, syrupy acid bubbled up around them, pressing them against the curiously stretchy membrane that made up the beast's skin. On some level, each realized the situation--being eaten alive by this horrid creature, whatever it was--but refused to understand it, and so each struggled and thrashed wildly as they could, bringing the sticky acid up further around them.

The worst thing was the smell. It was the smell of the gurgling, shifting acid, which was an assault on every sense.

But they didn't have to worry about it very long.

They would be digesting for awhile, but they didn't feel it for much longer. Their minds snapped like dry twigs when confronted with the experience.

Outside, a set of red-brown eyes observed this event. The man smirked to himself quietly and watched as the star-creature floated around looking for more. It snuffled over towards his perch on top of an SUV, but squealed with fear and quickly darted away after touching his face with its tendrils.

His experiment had worked quite nicely.

Knowing their insufferable messiah complexes, Sailor Epsilon and her companion would be forced to come out and investigate. As soon as they caught wind of it, they would come running to try to correct the so-called problem and rescue the souls that had fallen into the clutches of the hungry dead.

* * *

"Pancakes? On a Monday morning? You'll fuckin' spoil me rotten, Morgan," Ian yawned, scratching his belly as he shuffled into the kitchen, looking around sleepily. There were two forks, two cups of tea, and a half-empty bottle of syrup set out on the kitchen island; the plates were on the counter next to the stove, waiting to be loaded up with fresh, fluffy pancakes. His housemate looked over her shoulder, smiled a little, and shifted from foot to foot nervously. "'S a nice change from the norm, anyway. Thanks." Mornings were just too busy for him to try to cook a decent-sized breakfast; he made it a habit to exercise at the gym before his shift, to make sure he was in top shape for the rest of the day, so his normal breakfast was something like cold poptarts and coffee. If he was really ahead of schedule, he'd buy a disgusting egg salad sandwich from the gas station. That way, the gagging from the foul taste would wake him up some more, and he'd get some protein and vitamins and shit like that.

"You're welcome, Mr--er, Ian." She hadn't quite broken her old habit yet.

"Don't be so nervous, huh?" he said.

"I can't help it," she said, setting down two plates of pancakes. He picked up his fork and started to eat. "What if they just laugh us out of the office? Or worse--what if they fire you?" He responded through a mouthful of half-chewed pancake. After a moment, he swallowed it and repeated himself.

"They can't. I'm a damn good policeman. My record would speak for itself." Morgan didn't look consoled. He shrugged and sipped some of the tea, then got up to retrieve a packet of sugar from one of the kitchen drawers; Ian liked his tea sweetened a little bit. "Well, whatever. Don't worry about it too much."

"I can't help it," she repeated idly, nervously nibbling at a forkful of pancake.

Morgan had hesitantly agreed to Ian's kind offer of attempting to pull some strings in order to get her some kind of a position within the police department. The extent of his string-pulling was an argumentative phone call to human resources. He was only a regular policeman; he didn't have any real pull with his superiors or a special in with the chief of police. Certainly, she thought he was a good policeman, and a fairly nice guy personally (if a bit rude and bossy), too, but he probably wasn't anything special, as far as cops went. He was just bossy and stubborn. She sipped from her cup of tea. Suppose they just laughed him out of the office? Or fired him? Or sent him on an involuntary vacation out of fear for his mental health? She was deeply, self-consciously aware of how utterly insane everything they fought was--and of how crazy it sounded when spoken of aloud. And that was when just the two of them were talking about it together. Imagine how much crazier it would've sounded to somebody who was out of the loop entirely!

"Um. So…" She fidgeted on her barstool. "How's the car?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, it's a piece of shit, but hey, it's a car. It'll get us where we're going. Until it's destroyed in the next… attack somehow. I'm taking bets as to how it'll go this time," he grumbled behind his teacup. The car he'd bought off of Craigslist on Sunday afternoon was an old Corvette, and he hated it, for a multitude of reasons. But it would do. It ran. That was what was most important right now.

"I did say I was sorry for melting it that time." Morgan smiled apologetically.

"And I said I accepted your apology, and you're sort of working it off, aren't you?" She nodded. "But that was just that one time. There were a bunch of other times, too. Insurance nightmare, I tell you, girly." He shook his head.

"I'm sorry," she said again. He shrugged and looked at the clock over on the wall.

"We better get going soon," Ian said, stifling a yawn as he stood up and shuffled to the sink to wash his plate. "Thanks for the pancakes."

"You're welcome."

After she washed her plate, she scurried to the bathroom with some of her new clothing. It wasn't the nicest-looking stuff--it had just been nice-ish stuff from the discount racks at Target, that being all she could really afford with the money she had left--but it would do for now, she supposed, as she dressed. Hair combed, hair ribbon put neatly into its place, face washed, glasses polished up as neatly as possible… once all this was done, she stepped back out and followed her host out of the front door, which he locked behind him. The Corvette sat in the driveway, waiting. Morgan had never thought too much about cars, but she could honestly say, without hesitation, that this one was uglier than sin. Normal Corvettes looked sort of cool, she supposed--that seemed to be the general consensus, anyway--but this one was largely held together with duct tape, primer paint, and vain hopes, which rather ruined any beauty it might have otherwise had.

She tugged the door open with a grunt of effort and hesitantly surveyed the inside. The passenger's seat had a couple of springs sticking out near the edges of the cushions at uncomfortable-looking angles. For a moment, she wished that they could have just biked to work together. It probably would have been more comfortable.

"It ain't the best, I know. Just get in," Moffat said. He squashed a spring down with one hand and slid into the driver's seat. His housemate climbed in on the other side, trying to get into a comfortable position.

"So, um… how do you think it'll go?"

"I don't know. However it turns out, hey, at least we tried, huh?"

"I suppose there's something to be said for trying," she agreed. "Still, it would be nice if we met with something like success."

"Stay optimistic, Morgan," he joked, shutting the door and starting the car. Morgan almost told him how much she had to worry about, but thought the better of it; even if she was Sailor Epsilon, she only had about half as much to worry about as Moffat did. The poor fellow had house payments and cars and food and money and job performance to worry about. Not to mention that he heaped a world of extra responsibility upon himself by running around with her fighting Mr Fairchild and Miss Sigma and all of the disaster they brought along with them. After awhile, she finally spoke again.

"Mr Moffat?"

"Yeah?"

"Why do you… I mean… why bother with all this extra stuff? Like running around fighting monsters. You don't have to. I mean, you shouldn't, really. I think it's too much extra stress for you, on top of everything else you already have to do." Her face turned pink, and she smiled a little. "I, er… I worry… a little, sir. That's all."

"I'm a policeman. It's my job."

"If you don't mind my asking, Mr Moffat--"

"Ian," he corrected.

"Yes, I'm sorry. Ian." Another nervous smile. "If you don't mind my asking, Ian, does it really say that you have to fight--I dunno--aliens and Things--in the policeman's handbook?"

"Nope." He frowned and jiggled the turn-signal a bit, trying to get it to work correctly so he could indicate a left turn. "I do it because it's the right thing to do. Call it an implied extension of my day job. 'Protect and serve' covers a wide range; it doesn't just stop at pulling people over for busted taillights and arresting bank robbers and shit. I gotta protect the populace, and if monsters and demons and aliens and what-the-fuck-ever start attacking my city, then dammit, I'm not gonna just sit back and wait for death." He tilted his head in thought. "I'd do it even if you weren't around. Come to think, I wonder if this happens a lot, and I just never noticed until those… things." Those ugly fuckin' things from his nightmares. If they had a proper name, he didn't know what it was, and he didn't care to know. "You hear it on the news sometimes, how people see UFOs and weird flying critters and shit like that. I saw some news reports about it last week, actually. If this were sooner, I would've said these folks were nuts. But now, I don't know anymore. What do you think?" Morgan shrugged.

"I don't know, honestly, sir. I always thought the Bermuda Triangle and UFOs were a load of nonsense, made up by too-imaginative people--you know, the sort of thing you would only find in Stephen King novels and David Bowie albums."

"Me, too."

She giggled a little. "Or that it was only wishful thinking. It's rather silly, but… I always figured it'd be really cool if those things were really real. If there were angels and aliens and UFOs, I thought that perhaps they would be mostly benevolent and that perhaps if I ever came into contact with them--more wishful thinking--I'd go off and have really great adventures."

"Bet you're disappointed now."

"Slightly." She gazed out of the window thoughtfully. Would it be too silly to elaborate on why she was only slightly disappointed with the way it had turned out in reality? Perhaps. "Although…"

On the one hand, she had gotten exactly what she wished for--she was running around having adventures, and with a lovely fellow that… that… she had grown quite fond of, all told. Morgan liked that she had gained a friend out of all this, although she truly hated that she was inconveniencing him so very much with all of this Sailor duty. If only they could have been normal friends. Then again, she thought with a frown, she was quite certain that if they had met under any other circumstances, and that if she were not Sailor Epsilon, Moffat would not want anything to do with her. People usually didn't; Morgan wasn't a very interesting person on her own. Only as long as she was Epsilon… only as long as she was a Sailor could she make any impact on the world and its people.

On the other hand, though, she was afraid. Any halfway-sane person would be. Except maybe Ian. He didn't seem to be afraid of anything, despite having listed his own fears to her earlier. Perhaps he had just listed a bunch of random phobias in order to seem normal, to comfort her. She wondered about him sometimes--about whether he was indeed just a normal guy with unparalleled bravery and Lawful Good qualities, or whether he was secretly some kind of superman who just happened to like wearing a policeman's outfit while working his magic. The point was, she wasn't brave like Ian; she was genuinely terrified of the things that they faced. A lot of the time, she wanted to run away screaming, hide under the covers, and not bother with it at all--to be away from it, quiet and safe.

There was no choice in the matter. Not anymore. Maybe there had been, at the beginning; maybe she could have simply looked away. But she had made her mind up since then. Even though she was absolutely terrified of everything being thrown at her, she couldn't have run away, not now, not ever. If she had, Mr Fairchild--and whatever other critters might have been lurking around in the dark at the edge of the world--would be given free reign over the planet and its people, those people being too weak to fight back against such things, as they didn't have the kind of power she had. Morgan had been given those powers, and they had to be used responsibly, to protect. There were people living out their short lives there, and they all deserved to have the opportunity to live them without fear of being eaten alive by the spiders or dosed up on a nerve agent whenever Mr Fairchild or Miss Sigma felt like it. Even if she wasn't a very good supergirl, she could, at least, do her part to protect the precious fragile lives scurrying across this unimportant little planet. Perhaps this world didn't matter in the universe at large, but it mattered to her, and mattered deeply.

Precious little was still precious, after all.

Briefly, she was reminded of the conversation she'd had with Mr Fairchild. He had said that sometimes Sailors, if strong enough, became the spirits of stars and planets. She doubted that she was strong enough--she was too afraid, too nervous--but if, on the off chance, she was… she would have liked to become the spirit of Earth. Did they get new titles? she wondered, or would she always be Sailor Epsilon? She would have liked that.

Her heart beat, and the pulsing beat filled her body with the warm, soft feeling that she got while dreaming. She smiled to herself.

"'Although…' what?" Moffat asked as he parked in the police station's lot.

"Eh?"

"You said 'although…' and then kind of went on one of your thoughtful vacations. What were you thinkin' about, huh?"

"Thoughtful vacations?"

"Yeah. You still look like you're hard at work, but there's something distant about you, and you get quiet, like you've just zoned out thinking." She blushed.

"Am I that strange? I'll try not to do it anymore," she apologized.

"It's kind of cute." Her face got redder. "But whatever. What were you talking about before you went out?"

"You'd said that you saw a news report about people seeing UFOs and stuff just recently. May I please ask where it was?" He chuckled and opened the car door. "I'd quite like to go there once our appointment's finished."

"Out of personal curiosity, or are we investigating something suspicious?" She smiled.

"You've got me figured out quickly."

"You are slightly transparent with your worrying." The smile faded a little, and she gave an indignant huff.

"Sir!"

"What? It's true. You worry about every goddamn thing. It's pretty predictable." She huffed again, crossing her arms, and he rolled his eyes. "Look, fuck it. Let's worry about our appointment right now. Shouldn't you transform?"

"Perhaps," she agreed, bringing the crystal out of her cardigan pocket and holding it up so that the winter sunshine sparkled through it, "but what about my gun? Won't people be slightly suspicious of a young lady bringing a Gatling gun into a police station, even if she is escorted in by one of their own?"

"…I hadn't thought of that." He scratched his chin thoughtfully as they walked towards the entrance.

* * *

He tried again.

His numerous wet, rheumy eyes scanned all over the city, peering into nightmares and dreams, looking through the angles of time-space, trying to locate them.

Almost every day of his infinitely-prolonged, awful life, his numerous eyes fell upon all things, and saw them in microscopic detail--things that were, or were not; things that may be, or may not be; things that had happened; the past, built upon its fragile foundation of whisper-thin time; the present, and everything that existed in Now, here and across the frayed edges of the universe; the future, in all of its infinite divergent branches, sprawling languidly across time. He should have been able to see them. He should have been able to catch their smoky shadows falling across time, or hear the edges of space fraying around them to accommodate their moving shapes.

But he found that he couldn't.

This was not a common occurrence, and it both distressed and enraged him.

He let out an ugly, inhuman sound when he found himself unsuccessful yet again. When he tried to look in on Sailor Epsilon, he saw nothing--nothing of value. All he saw was a black, star-flecked space. She was not there among the stars. And that might have meant…

"Master?"

Sigma had shuffled out to visit him, a worried look on her face; the man had been outside for hours at this point, after saying that he was only going on a short shuffle through the weed-choked, overgrown gardens. The girl saw him sitting there, but he did not answer, save with a low, gurgling snarl. His upper lip was curled in disgust and anger; subconsciously, she took a few steps back, then forced herself to go forward again instead.

"Master? You look worried. What's happened?"

Again, the same answer.

"It's that… that yellow-ribbon one, isn't it?" She huffed. "She's standing in the way of progress. I'd like to make an example out of her in my new world!" There was a splinter of ice within her heart, and it throbbed painfully as she spoke, nearly choking her words out; she clutched at her chest, clawing madly at her chest, as if trying to get that splinter out of herself, screaming. Soft, pale shreds of her flesh fell to the pavement as she tore at herself with her ugly, scaly claws. Underneath the skin on her chest were similar rough, foul-smelling scales. She looked down and whined softly, looking terrified at what she found growing beneath her flesh. She didn't know what was happening; she didn't know why this icy, awful pain tormented her, where it came from, why she had grown this second skin. She fell to her knees on the pavement, huffing and panting, while Fairchild looked at her, disapproving and dispassionate. Sigma heaved for several minutes, then finally threw up in the weeds, still feeling the ice burning in her throat. She could no longer speak, and she looked at her master for solace and healing and help. After a moment, he smirked, showing his teeth.

"Precisely right. I think you should show her how you handle those who stand in your way. It's far past time that you stand up and collect what you feel is due to you; avenge all of those who have not been so fortunate as to live to see your new world. Destroy what is, and build what you think should be. And that all starts with killing those who stand in your way. Aren't I right?" Sigma hesitated for a moment. For just that instant, she felt that perhaps she should turn back. Maybe she could be redeemed if she just tried hard enough, perhaps try volunteer work with orphaned children or the mentally ill; maybe she could build her own world quietly and peacefully; maybe she could defrost the painful cold feeling inside of her. Maybe it wasn't worth it to keep obeying this man, if it meant committing cold-blooded murder. If she asked Sailor Epsilon or her companion for help… maybe…

No.

Sigma shook her head.

This was more important. If she had to suffer a little bit of pain to build her new world, so be it. A new, safe, peaceful world--their heaven for the forgotten--would only be built when she ripped out the guts of the old world--the world of hate and suffering and cruelty perpetrated by the callous, harsh people that ruled it. The people who forgot. Changes were built on sacrifices, on the altar of the old and the broken, the things that had not worked. She would be the priestess at the altar that Mr Fairchild had guided her to build. When all was said and done, she would be the heroine of all the world--what she would leave of it, what was good and right.

If she turned back, she would return to being insignificant and useless as she had ever been. Again, she would be forgotten by everyone… assuming, of course, that Mr Fairchild would not sooner kill her than let her go. He had never said as much, but somehow, Sigma knew; it was like knowing that the sun would rise in the morning and that the grass would continue to be green. Prosaic, inborn knowledge of some sort.

She smiled momentarily before the screaming, frigid pain took over her again, tearing through every one of her nerve endings. She began to tear at her skin once more, shredding it, and Mr Fairchild watched, a grin spreading across his handsome false face. His little pawn had grown by leaps and bounds. Soon, he would move her into play.

They were going to have a lot of fun before too long.

* * *

Sylvia Ruiz, human resources manager for the City of West Hollywood police department, stared at the papers in her folder, raising a skeptical eyebrow at the two interviewees sat in front of her. Morgan smiled nervously and fidgeted in her chair, trying very hard to look Mrs Ruiz in the eye. It was difficult. Job interviews made Morgan nervous, and it was even worse when you were trying to tell the interviewer that you were a superhero and that their department required your assistance in destroying vicious drooling space monsters that had come to visit the city. One got the distinct feeling that Mrs Ruiz thought perhaps both of them were utterly mad, maybe on the brink of having the nice young men in the clean white coats carry them out.

"Officer Moffat says that you can 'transform' into a warrior with superhuman abilities," the woman said in a skeptical tone of voice, frowning at the man. "This makes me question Officer Moffat's mental fitness." He frowned just ever-so-slightly and looked as though he was considering a sharp remark, but managed to suppress it.

"I know it sounds mad, but… please, please just hear us out," Morgan pleaded. "He's perhaps the most stably-minded fellow I've ever had the pleasure of knowing." He flashed her a grateful look. "I could prove it to you, if you wouldn't mind, ma'am."

"Go ahead," Mrs Ruiz sighed, leaning her head on her hand and looking bored. She wondered why they had been let in at all, and why the paperwork to dismiss Moffat from his duties altogether had not been filled out, after having seen in his records that he was no longer allowed to drive an official police car due to the way the last had gone missing--how he could not remember how it had gone missing or when, just that it had gone and he had to walk back to the station to fill out the report of the incident. According to the record, he had been an absolutely fantastic officer--level-headed, intelligent, patient--up until that day. He had been coming back with increasingly stranger stories recently, and now this pudgy, plain-looking girl with the little New Age bauble in her hand, insisting that she was a superhero.

"Thank you very much, ma'am," the younger woman said, smiling brightly and offering a slight curtsy as she stood up. Once she was up, she held up the little crystal. "Epsilon Power, Make Up!" she said. There was a brief delay as the crystal seemed to spark and sputter under the fluorescent neon office lights; momentarily, she was terrified that she didn't have the powers anymore. After a few seconds, it flashed sunny-yellow, and the familiar feeling of becoming Sailor Epsilon replaced her fleeting lapse into terror. The warmth washed over her, and the heavy, reassuring weight of the enormous gun appeared in her arms. She hugged it to her as a child would hug a favorite toy.

As the yellow light faded, across the human resources desk, the manager stared, jaw dropped. Moffat was unable to suppress a smug smirk, but fortunately did not say anything aloud, though it looked as though he really wanted to.

"Wh… what… the hell…?" Mrs Ruiz stuttered, baffled completely by what she'd just seen. Her immediate thought, as most rational people, was that it was some kind of smoke-and-mirrors magic trick, but it was a feeble, whimpering thought that was drowned out beneath a million bewildered questions… and by the sudden frightening certainty that what she'd seen was not just smoke-and-mirrors magic, but real magic. That gun couldn't have been hidden anywhere; Officer Moffat was six and a half feet tall, and it was bigger than HE was. How was that girl holding it? She seemed to be all pudge and no muscle. Sylvia was a hardened skeptic in all respects, but seeing this in front of her managed to really shake her. On the one hand, it seemed silly to suddenly accept, without some serious questioning, this new surreality standing before her leaning against an enormous military-grade gun. On the other, she was having a difficult time trying to figure out a solid, rational explanation for it. There were only questions. So many questions.

"Sailor Epsilon, sailor-suited servant of the people," Morgan said, though she really didn't know why, or what prompted it. "I'm here to help, if you please."

"Um. Well." Mrs Ruiz didn't seem to be able to come up with much else. She looked down at the paperwork on the desk, then at Sailor Epsilon--who wore a hopeful smile and shifted about nervously.

"Look. I've got an idea. Call it a trial run. I saw on the news that there've been some weird-as-fuck murders going on outside the edge of town. I know it's not our jurisdiction, not being anywhere near West Hollywood and all, but it seems like the case could use Morgan's expertise. Give us a week, and we'll have it sorted," the man said. "We'll solve the murders and we'll bring whatever's been doing 'em to you. The bits we can find and shovel into a Ziploc bag, anyway--at any rate, we will bring 'em back to show you. And if we can't do that in the time limit, then you can fire me."

"Ian!" Morgan whipped her head around, looking worried.

"Shh." He waved at her, trying to get her to remain quiet. She leaned over to whisper her worries in his ear, but he merely put a hand over her mouth; she frowned and licked his palm, which caused him to move it away again and wipe it on his trousers, making a face. It was disgusting and rather rude to have licked his hand that way, for which she later apologized, but it was rude, too, to have clapped a hand over her mouth that way in the first place.

"Fine. It's a deal. You have one week to solve this case, and if you don't, you're not only fired, I'm calling in the Men in Black to take her away." Unnervingly, neither of them could quite tell if Mrs Ruiz was joking about that last bit.

"Right. Thanks, Mrs Ruiz," Moffat said, standing to shake her hand with the one that Morgan hadn't licked.

"Yes--thank you so much, ma'am, you're very fair," the girl said, curtsying politely to the older woman, before being rushed out of the room by Moffat.

Once they were outside again, sitting in the car together, Morgan frowned at him a little. She was still transformed, and the gun lay across the backseat, the barrel sticking out of one of the windows. There was a long silence between them, thick with nervous energy, while Moffat nonchalantly smoked his cigarette, occasionally ashing it out of the window. Finally, she spoke first.

"You shouldn't have bet your job on this, Mr Moffat. What do you have if you're fired from your job? You'll have bills and you'll lose your house and you'll have a hard time getting rehired at so much as McDonald's, let alone at another police station! It seems like police work's really important to you. Why would you do something so silly as to bet your future as a policeman on something like this? You don't even know if we'll be able to figure it out. You shouldn't have," she repeated fretfully. "I don't understand why you would… why you…" He put an arm behind his head and just grinned. After a moment's thought, she sighed. "Yes, I suppose that they are the obvious culprits, aren't they? But that doesn't mean we'll catch them, and if we fight, there's no guarantee we'll win this time."

"But I know you, Morgan," he said softly. "You won't back down, and determination's a good foundation for victory." She blushed, silent again for another moment. "Don't start thinkin' I'm going all chickenshit on you, but, as fuckin' corny as it sounds… I believe in you."

"Um." She blinked, dumbfounded. "Th… thank you, I guess," she mumbled, face red, unable to come up with anything clever to say. He hadn't even said anything very significant or grand, but it made her feel somehow… important, like. It sent the bubbling-warm feeling flowing through her again, and she smiled to herself a little. He was a good man, was Ian. A bit rude and bossy, but very good. Sometimes, she got jealous of how kind he could be, wishing that she could be half as giving and nice, and that she had the ability to say good things at exactly the correct moment, which seemed to be some sort of special talent that he had; right now, she wanted to say something perfect to him, something that would make him feel the same happy rush, but found herself unable to come up with anything at all. It bothered her.

"Movin' on." He stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and started the car--it took a few tries to actually get it going. "What do you reckon we should do about all this, huh?"

"Er. Well… obviously, we should drive up there tonight and… wait, I guess. And be ready." She tilted her head thoughtfully. "I wish you wouldn't come tonight. But I know you're going to just wave your hand dismissively and insist upon coming anyway."

"Damn straight I am."

"I can't win," she chuckled a little sadly. She couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was going to happen; it was a vague feeling, but it was enough to make her uneasy, and whatever it was, it couldn't be good. She wanted him to stay at home, safe and sound, so that nothing bad would happen to him; that would be the best way of protecting her friend, even better than the usual forcefield that she generated over him at his insistence. But Ian was stubborn; he wouldn't accept her request that he stay at home safely. No, he would, of course, absolutely insist on going along with her; nothing she said would discourage him.

"Not in this case, no." He turned out of the parking lot and onto the street.

"My, but you're stubborn." She smiled. "Are you secretly some star-born mentor sent to guide me, or something?"

"Nah. I'm just hardcore like that," he replied with a grin.

"Awfully modest, too, aren't you, sir?" she chuckled.

"I'm not conceited, but god knows I've got every right to be." He pulled up at a red light. "So that's our basic plan, is it?" She nodded. "Wait and watch, on top of the hill. Sounds good to me. Knowing those bastards, they'll try to spring something nasty on us, so we've got to keep a careful eye out for traps. You know, vicious hellbeasts lurking behind trees, shit like that." Morgan pondered a moment.

"Have you got some large handcuffs lying around?" she inquired.

"I might. Why?"

"I think that perhaps we should try to catch Miss Sigma and help her. Somehow. I… it sounds a bit silly, I suppose, really, but… Miss Sigma is just a normal lady, it seems. Powers aside."

"And scales and claws and god-knows-what-else she's grown since the last time we've seen her."

"Well… yes. But… still… I think we should try to help her. She is only human. Mostly." She twiddled her index fingers together. "And the scales are sort of my fault, aren't they? I tried shooting that big black lance out of her hands and… and…" She shuddered, and Ian patted her hand gently; if he weren't driving the car, he would have given her a hug.

"We can try. I don't know if there's even any sense in trying at this point, but if you wanna, hey, go for it."

"Thank you," she said. She squeezed his hand a little and smiled weakly.

Tonight, then.


	11. Sailor Epsilon's Last Stand

_**Sailor Epsilon's Last Stand**_

Morgan had never thought much about death. It was a rather unpleasant matter, so she preferred not to dwell on it, instead wishing to focus on the pleasantries of the world.

Well… most recently, that was what she liked to think of.

It was strange, really; just a few months ago, when she was only Morgan--when she was nobody important--she would have instead lost herself in a never-ending labyrinth of fretting and worrying about the little troubles in her life. She would have started panicking about making the rent, or how empty her bank account was. As far as she had known, there was nothing else to life and no way to escape; as far as she had known, that was the meaning to life. Running around in circles and worrying about money, daydreaming pointlessly about ways to get out--thinking about adventures and exploration and fun. But she wasn't brave enough or good enough at anything to do something like that.

She hadn't thought so, anyway.

But that had changed in the past few months, when she had become Sailor Epsilon; without really noticing it, she found that a lot of her thoughts had turned to more important things. The beauty of the world, however ephemeral it might have been; the goodness of people, however dark times must be for them to shine; adventures, no matter how dangerous and horrifying they were. In the midst of the horrific adventures, she suddenly realized that she had found the purpose and excitement that she had longed for her entire life.

Granted, reality was far removed from dreams. She was completely broke, received no fame or glory or even acknowledgement for her hard work, and she was routinely frightened out of her wits by faceless interdimensional horrors. But the truth of it was…

The truth of it was that she didn't want it any other way. She had a purpose; she was important; she was doing exciting, good, hard, honest work; and she had a friend. A real, honest friend, that she was extremely fond of, all told.

Yes, reality was radically different from all of the lonely, desperate dreams she had woven just to cope with her dull, meaningless existence.

Reality was ultimately _better_, even if it was rather more dark and terrifying than expected. While it wasn't sunshine and flowers and rainbows, the world was an awesome place, and she had grown to quite like it. It was a glorious place, one that she wanted to protect from the likes of Mr Fairchild and Miss Sigma, as well as any other creature that might have threatened it.

But she had never stopped to think about the possibility of dying in the line of duty, not even once. Every time she fought something, her thoughts were of life--hers or others', it had always been life. She had fought for survival, simply because she never considered the alternative.

Now, however, the thought seemed to hang over her head, like a little black raincloud. She couldn't quite shake it away, no matter how much she tried to do so. There was a nasty, nagging suspicion that something terrible was going to happen to someone tonight. She shivered.

What would death be like? And what happened? She had a vague feeling that _something_ would happen afterward. Although she wasn't particularly religious, she had been raised that way, and had even attended a Catholic school back in Ohio. Somehow, she got the feeling that she wasn't bound for Heaven, since she hadn't been keeping up since the age of fifteen or so. Perhaps she would be a friendly ghost--maybe hang around the city continuing to protect people, even if she was just an insubstantial spirit. The Angel of the City of Angels. That would have been neat.

Ultimately, she didn't know, and found that she didn't care that much. There were more preoccupying thoughts at the forefront of her mind. If she did die, would it hurt? How would she go out? Blaze of glory, she hoped. If she absolutely _had_ to die tonight, she hoped that it would be one of those epic charges where she took down both Miss Sigma and Mr Fairchild all in one go. Still… she hoped that she was just being silly, that none of this wondering would come to anything at all.

Another ugly thought came to her. What if it wasn't her? What if it was… She glanced over at Moffat and chewed her index fingernail nervously. She didn't want him to die, either. He was a good man, and good men should live. And, really, she…

"What?" he asked, noticing her staring at him. He clipped a little leather pouch to his belt. It was full of spare ammunition. They had stopped back at home to begin preparing for the night's stakeout, and for the past hour or so, Ian had been collecting all of the ammunition in his house and storing it into the pouch. He had also fed the snake and the turtle in the spare bedroom. Just in case.

"Um. Nothing, sir. Nothing at all." Morgan fidgeted and took her finger out of her mouth, trying to look nonchalant.

"You're a spectacularly awful liar," he commented. "Fess up."

"I'm… it's… I'm worried, I-Ian," she stammered, smiling nervously. It looked as though she were only smiling so that she didn't start crying really hard. Moffat wrapped his arms around her and gently cradled her close, brushing her russet-brown hair with the fingers of one hand. She squeaked and buried her head in his chest; he could feel her face turning red even through the fabric of his shirt.

"Go on," he said softly. "What about?"

"I… I don't know," she confessed truthfully. "There's just something… _wrong_ about today. I don't want to go. I know we've got to, but… I feel like some… like something awful's gonna happen."

"I'll make sure it doesn't. Promise."

"How can you promise that?"

"With full confidence in both of us."

"I'm afraid it doesn't quite answer my question, Mr Mo--Ian," she mumbled.

"It'll have to do. I haven't got any other, real answers."

"Oh."

He gave her a squeeze. "I'll protect you if you protect me. How's that sound?" She nodded. "So let's just go out and kick Fairchild's ass like usual."

"Yes, sir," she replied, a tiny smile appearing on her face. She shifted around from foot to foot, then stood up on tiptoe and clumsily kissed Moffat's cheek. "Thank you, sir."

"No problem." He grinned. "Come on, let's go."

Together, they walked out of Moffat's house and out to the car. And despite his reassurances, Morgan found that she still couldn't quite shake the dark feeling hanging over her head.

Traffic was busy, so it took them quite some time to get to the big hill outside of town where the disappearances had taken place. Much to Moffat's annoyance, they found that there was a large crowd assembled there.

"What the fuck are these idiots doing?" he grumbled as he climbed out of the car and slammed the door shut. "More importantly, how're we gonna clear 'em out…?" The man drummed his fingers on the hood of the car and tried to think. If he had a proper siren or backup or something…

"Would you like me to do something?" Morgan offered helpfully.

"If you can."

She felt kind of strange transforming in front of people other than Ian, but perhaps these people could be discouraged and dispersed by the simple display of the minigun. Or at least, perhaps it would draw attention and they could be rounded up and scattered a little more easily.

Once transformed, she hefted up the minigun and advanced through the crowd, followed by Ian, and headed for the top of the hill. She pushed off of the ground and floated into the air above the assembled mass of people, trying to draw their attention.

"Pardon me," she said politely. "Excuse the inconvenience, but we're going to have to ask you all to leave, quickly, and in an orderly fashion, please."

Down below, the people merely gaped. Wildfire whispers ran through the crowd, confused and bewildered at the sight set before them. Camera flashes clicked and winked from the darkness, and she blushed brightly, using one hand to tug at the hem of her skirt, uncomfortably aware of her inappropriate, unladylike clothing and her current position. Still, it was a necessary evil.

"Please?" she repeated. "It's for your own safety." Her eyes scanned over the crowd, looking for two familiar faces… fortunately, they were nowhere to be seen just yet. Seeing this, Morgan breathed a sigh of relief; she didn't want these bystanders getting mixed up in this mess. But they made no attempt to move, instead content to stand and point and whisper to one another. She sighed. "If I must, I shall teleport you all back into the city limits, and I warn you that I haven't done that before, and it may hurt."

Still, nobody even attempted to move.

"I'm very sorry, but we would really like for you to leave, and it appears as though I must remove you. Sorry about that." A hundred little puffs of yellow smoke filled the air as each person in the crowd, save Ian, vanished one by one, and a new streak of color was added to the already smog-choked skyline of the city as these people all reappeared elsewhere. Sailor Epsilon smiled (a little tiredly, Ian thought, concerned) and floated back down to the ground. "They should be all right. They're in a safer place now. Back in town."

"Good girl." He patted her shoulder. "Now all we have to do is wait." Both knelt on the ground; Ian started to load his gun, and Morgan leaned against her minigun, gray eyes nervously darting about, trying to catch the first glimpse of Mr Fairchild or Miss Sigma or whatever they might have been sending out to call tonight. Occasionally, she would take her glasses off and clean them on the edge of her skirt, then put them back on to resume looking around. The bows tied on her hair ribbon fluttered about in the night breeze, mimicking the movement of the larger bow on her chest.

"Ian?" she asked.

"What's that?" Having finished with his gun, he started checking the other things he'd brought--the pepper spray, the truncheon, the handcuffs. Best to be prepared and know what kind of condition everything was in.

"What do you think happens when people die?"

"Don't know, don't care. I'll have plenty of time to worry about it when I'm old. Since I'm young, though, I'll worry about living. Why d'ya ask?"

"No reason." She hugged her gun, as if the cold gray metal offered her some great comfort. "I don't know, either. But I'm worried." He tried to think of some way to backtrack and make his answer more comforting, but found that he couldn't come up with anything that sounded honest enough. Instead, he reached over and rubbed her shoulder.

"Like I said… we'll be okay. I'll make sure of it." He tried to give her a reassuring grin, but all of a sudden, found that he couldn't entirely believe it himself. He'd never once stopped to think about it before, simply taking their victories as they came and being smugly satisfied with it, but now that he did… the odds looked really, really fuckin' bleak.

They were a neurotic (though admittedly sweet) girl and a hardheaded policeman, bumbling their way through these fights with nothing more than brute force and dumb luck on their side. Their opponents were a psychotic dark multi-eyed-octopus-thing with more power than _God_, an equally insane lizard-woman who seemed to have more finesse and skill than Morgan had with her powers, and their endless parade of goopy interdimensional horrors.

How long would their luck hold out? It wouldn't be forever. Who knew when it would just crap out on them?

He gently hugged Morgan again, finding it to be the only comfort that he could draw and the only comfort that he could give. She smiled at him weakly, and he felt the warmth of the forcefield surround him--a silent promise of protection, he supposed. Maybe she felt it was the least she could do.

After a few moments of this, they turned to look at the sky. There were no stars to be seen at the moment; they were all hidden behind a thick, dark cloud. The moon, as well. _How appropriate_, Morgan thought. Silently, they watched the dark and empty expanse of the heavens, waiting nervously for their opponents to arrive.

* * *

"Well, come-come. Don't want to keep them waiting. Since they're so eager to drag themselves to their deaths and all." Fairchild whistled cheerfully and tugged his plaything along by the yoke of pale-violet ribbon that he had made, like a child tugging along its little puppy on a leash. "We wouldn't want to disappoint, would we?"

She crawled along clumsily, wailing in great pain through her new mouths, which opened from one edge of her jaw to the other, stuck through with a hundred jagged-needle teeth. It felt like a splinter of eternal ice was being driven into every nerve in her body as she dragged herself along the pavement. All of her bones had been rearranged in uncomfortable new angles, befitting the new spiny, alien shape that her body had started to take. New skin had started to grow in the places where these bones had rudely torn through her old flesh, but it wasn't the soft, pale skin of a human; some of it was covered in thick, barbed gray scales, and some was shining, wet, matte-black. Her improved vision, her multiple new eyes, showed her the world just beyond the world that she had known as Laurie Dalton--a world full of squirming, ugly things and horrific shapes and colors.

But she hardly noticed any of it anymore. All she knew anymore was the mind-blowing pain of her existence. Her ability to think and to remember had been stolen away with the change in shape. Now, she was little better than a beast, dragged along by a ghastly-smiling master through a dark corridor in the sky, towards the Baiting Hill, as he called it. The ice-feeling had finally just overtaken her, eating her up alive. If asked, she would not have been able to remember why or how this had happened… except she remembered that it had been crawling all over her body for months now. On mild days, it sent her into itching fits for an hour at a time, peeling and flaking off her old skin to reveal the ugly scales beneath. On hard days, she would collapse to the floor and spend the entire time screaming and struggling and squirming against some invisible tormentor, until her master came to soothe the pain with his (false…?) smile.

But sometimes, he would just allow her to scream.

He could no longer see them. It still pissed him off to no end. So he was just going to draw them out, slaughter some of their people, and their messiah complexes would bring them there sooner or later, where he could finish up his game by killing them. Ultimately, it would be their own faults. They had found some way to hide themselves, and that annoyed him. And wasn't that the first unwritten rule of any being's life? Don't piss off the people in the station above you. Their fault.

He dragged the former Sailor Sigma through the corridor he had made between the stars and shoved her out onto the ground with a heavy thump. The ground quaked beneath her heaving, wailing form. Her long, knife-like claws dug into the sandstone.

Several feet away, Sailor Epsilon stopped the nervous pacing that she'd been doing and turned to face Mr Fairchild and Miss Sigma. Or what had once been Miss Sigma. The forced look of determination fell from her face, and she looked at the wyrm-beast in front of her. Was that what happened to the Sailors in the end? She shivered and felt a deep amount of pity and sympathy for her poor enemy. Sure, she hadn't _liked_ the other woman, but that was just the thing. Miss Sigma, no matter how psychotic and vicious she was, had been a human once. Once…

Ian, without hesitation, grabbed his handgun and fired off several shots at Fairchild. They struck him directly in the center mass, with a few dull, muffled thuds, and he hardly seemed bothered by it at all. Instead, he stepped forward, one hand in the pocket of his leather jacket and one holding the ragged ribbon that he had tied around Sigma's neck.

"Good to see you both again," Fairchild said nonchalantly. He grinned, and there were too many teeth in his face.

"I believe in fair play, so I would like to give you a warning, Mr Fairchild, sir," Epsilon said politely, leaning on her gun. "Please leave this planet immediately, or else we shall be forced to expel you rather violently."

"Ain't you cute?" the man laughed. His jaw unhinged and hung down towards his chest as he did so. He seemed less and less bothered with keeping up the handsome human illusion. "I'm afraid I can't do that. I haven't had my fill of fun yet. Imagine the lives I could ste--"

A look of complete shock was frozen across his handsome false face as the long, pointed, burning-red bullets sprayed forth from Sailor Epsilon's minigun--3900 rounds per minute, chewing up his torso and splattering it across the gravel of the parking lot several feet away, his borrowed body raggedly torn in half across the middle. A lot of his belly had been vaporized by the assault, and some strange black vapor rose up from the frayed edges near his hips and near his collarbone. The lower half of his body collapsed squelchily onto the sandstone in front of Epsilon and Moffat. Bilious yellow-brown liquid drooled out onto the ground from both halves of the body. Moffat put a hand over his mouth, struggling very hard not to throw up right now; Epsilon wasn't quite so successful. She was knelt near her friend's feet, hugging his legs for support, and heaving. With his free hand, Moffat patted her head.

"Ugh," she said weakly.

"Oh, man," her friend agreed.

"Be fair, I gave him a warning that he chose to disregard," she said, panting and leaning her head against his knees. "And anyway, I don't think I'm done yet."

"Mm. Good point." The man helped her to her feet, giving her a quick hug. "Are you feeling okay, though? You look awfully tired."

"Just fine, thank you, sir," she said, still huffing and wheezing. He raised an eyebrow, looking as though he had his doubts, but he didn't say anything. She smiled a little. She _was _a bit tired, but she could just tough it out. Epsilon wanted this to be the last time she ever had to bother with seeing Mr Fairchild. Quite honestly, she'd grown frustrated with his homicidal antics, and wanted him off of her planet. Time to move on to bigger and better things. Nicer things.

"So what are we gonna do about that thing?" Ian motioned at the still, black creature that sat several feet away from them. It made no move to attack them or even snap at them once they crept closer for a better look; it merely lay on its side, its breath short and labored. Epsilon crouched next to it, squinting through her glasses and taking note of its appearance. Spine sticking up out of some thin, wet, sticky skin. About half a dozen eyes (she assumed that was what those little slits in the membrane were hiding, anyway). Two or three mouths. Several spindly legs with bones jutting out at strange angles. The front two legs were built more like hands, covered in scales, and had knife-like claws. And there was a tattered purple ribbon tied around where its neck might have been…

"…Miss Sigma?" she said, frowning. It made a wounded, gurgling noise in response. "Oh, my." Epsilon reached out, her open hand lighting up with the soft yellow glow of her healing spell. Maybe it would be able to cure Miss Sigma's unfortunate condition. And maybe if it did, they could start over correctly--make amends for any pain that had passed between them, become friends, and look forward to a new, bright future without the black, looming spectre of Mr Fairchild. It would have been quite nice. She felt sorry for the other woman, having been manipulated by the devil himself, and also felt sorry that she hadn't been able to help sooner.

The healing spell wasn't doing anything, except for perhaps giving the poor creature a pleasant tickle; she was purring or gurgling and seemed pleased at the moment. A ripple of huge, shifting black lumps froze on her back, but didn't go away completely. Perhaps the spell would at least slow it or freeze it, if nothing else.

"Sigma?" Moffat repeated, raising an eyebrow. "What happened to her?"

"I don't know, but it must have been terrible."

"Well, can you cure her?"

"I'm trying, but…"

"But nothing much is happening," he completed for her, sighing. He took out a pair of gloves from his belt and pulled them on, not wanting his hands to get sticky, and patted Sigma's gelatinous mass. "Look, I'm sorry for anything we mighta done to piss you off."

"Is there anything we can do to make it up to you?" Morgan asked gently.

A gurgle. One of Sigma's mouths opened, and a long, tube-like pink tongue lolled out, licking Epsilon's gloved hand. She politely tried to hide her disgust and patted Sigma's head again.

"We'll sit with you a bit, Miss Sigma," she said.

Morgan wondered, pityingly, if Miss Sigma were going to die in this form. She was in immense pain, it seemed, and her breathing was growing more labored by the second. If she did, then she and Moffat would have to hold a small funeral and bury her out here on the hill. Although she knew it probably wouldn't happen, she secretly hoped that Sigma would pull through somehow, whether in this form or morphed back into a human. If she did end up dying, then Morgan would have to dig her grave and hold a funeral--even if she didn't know Miss Sigma's real name, the poor thing nevertheless deserved a spot of kindness at the possible end of her life. Maybe that was why she'd fallen in with Mr Fairchild in the first place.

Was this what happened to them, then?

She shuddered. She didn't want to wind up like poor Miss Sigma.

Ian, perhaps sensing Morgan's concern, gently rubbed her shoulder.

While the two gently patted her rubbery hide in the most comforting manner that could be managed, Sigma gurgled softly, twitched, and drew her last ragged, labored breath. Her monstrous new body was still. Morgan shuddered again; Ian hugged her close to him comfortingly.

"She was an enemy, I suppose," she said quietly, mumbling into the crook of his neck, "but at one point, she _was _human… and she didn't deserve whatever led her all to this. I wish we could have made up and become friends."

He nodded, but didn't say anything, content to embrace his own friend, glad that she hadn't turned out the same way… _yet_? he wondered darkly. Christ. He didn't want to see her like that. He wanted her to stay here with him, forever if possible; he loved her. Maybe romantically, maybe as Just-Friends, he didn't know, but he was absolutely certain that, either way, he loved Morgan, and he was absolutely certain that he didn't want to let her go, didn't want her to become a monster like poor Sigma. Ian loved her the way she was--pudgy, neurotic, but always well-meaning.

"Oh--you're suddenly frisky," he said, startled and confused, as Morgan suddenly shoved him down onto the ground. She blushed brightly.

"Sir!"

"Kidding. What--"

A black, whiplike appendage, spiked with iron-like claws, went flying over them, screeching through the night air. Sigma rolled around to stand on her multiple legs, her many mouths snapping open and shut in a cacophony of angry, unearthly snarls. Jesus!

"Wasn't she just _dead _a minute ago?!" he asked, confused.

"I thought so, too," she agreed in a panicky tone of voice. Both ducked the next swing as well.

"I've got a plan--let me get her down, Morgan."

"Yes, sir--go ahead."

Sigma let out an almighty, screeching roar, and Sailor Epsilon felt the ground rumble beneath her feet.

"But you might have to run and dodge her claws for awhile," he whispered into her ear. "As a distraction."

"Right," she said reluctantly. She put her gun down for the moment and began running. If it weren't such a serious situation, it would have been goddamn hilarious; Morgan was a clumsy runner, being as unathletic as she was.

She would be okay, though.

She always was.

Ian unhooked the pepper spray from his tool belt and crept closer to the former Sailor Sigma, spraying it into what was probably her face. Distracted by the chemical burns assaulting her multiple eyes, she began thrashing about wildly, howling and screeching. It scratched fruitlessly at itself with the iron claws, ripping open its sticky skin to pour some white ichor onto the sandstone ground. He felt bad watching it, honestly… nevertheless, he reached for his taser and aimed it the best he could. The darts buried themselves into Sigma's rubbery, shining bruise-purple skin, sending jolts of electricity through her system. This stunned her briefly, long enough for Sailor Epsilon to throw the magical net over her.

"I'm afraid--I don't really want to kill her," the yellow-suited sailor said nervously. Ian rubbed her shoulder.

"You're a good girl, Morgan," he said gently. "But I think we have to. Poor thing's miserable, and she probably don't mean well for our world."

"I know, but…" She looked at the stunned, still body of the former Sailor Sigma, distressed. "I suppose it can't be helped." She hoisted her gun up a bit and took aim, then closed her eyes tightly. "I'm sorry, Miss Sigma. _Pulsar Missile_!"

Unseen, the long, pointed bullets erupted from the minigun with the screaming chatter of metal. Behind her, she felt Ian's hand on her shoulder again. "Shh. It's okay." She slowly opened her eyes, looking at Sigma. Her monstrous form was slowly evaporating into a sludgy black smog, dissipating into the night air.

"I guess she'll never have a chance to be a star, but she can still be a part of the night sky," Sailor Epsilon said, smiling a little. The warm, golden feeling pulsated in her heart. Miss Sigma wasn't in pain--she wasn't under the thrall of Mr Fairchild anymore, either--and now, she could still make up a piece of heaven. Perhaps if Morgan herself became a star, they would see one another someday, in some other shape, and she would apologize. And perhaps then, they really could be friends, in their different roles and shapes.

That was assuming she survived whatever was next.

Of course Mr Fairchild wasn't done. She shifted around nervously. What would he do next? Where was he?

"You can cry if you need to. I won't think any less of you," Ian said.

"Thank you, sir."

She felt like crying for a moment, but found that she couldn't. The golden warmth filled her, and she smiled briefly. Then the thought occurred to her again.

What would happen if she died?

What would happen to Ian, to Los Angeles, to the planet?

Miss Sigma was (perhaps) fading into moonbeams; her body was almost entirely gone now, vanished into the ether.

What would happen after?

Well… she just wouldn't find out, that was all. She nodded to herself a little. She would live. So would Ian. She would make sure of it.

Although the condition of Miss Sigma's body kind of raised a question. If she did live, she didn't have anything to show Mrs Ruiz back at the police department.

"Do you think Mr Fairchild will leave something behind?" Morgan asked.

Ian shrugged. "Dunno. He fuckin' better, or I'll be pissed and out of a job."

"Oh, my--we can't have that." She smiled at her friend, then looked over at where Mr Fairchild's human skin lay. Ink-black sludge was pooling out of his body, pulling back into its own eldritch shape, into the headache-inducing, ill-angled _thing _that she had seen in the darkness, when she went to speak to him--all spines and claws and strangely-proportioned eyes blinking open and shut, spilling out of more dimensions than it really should have occupied. A grinning, slippery shadow, smoothly sliding across the ground, flickering in and out of space, rising up to block stars in the sky. The sailor swallowed hard and ground her feet into the sand, the warmth in her chest flaring into a fire. "I… _we_ warned you fairly, Mr Fairchild. I am out of patience, and I am through being polite with you," she said in the most civil tone she could manage. She swung her gun around, training it on Fairchild's ghastly form.

"Please," he said, chuckling darkly. His voice echoed; his grin spread across the gelatinous mass of his body, showing off a number of pointy teeth, stained yellow and rusty-brown. "It's pointless to even try with that little toy of yours. You could never hope to defeat--or even contain--me. I will eat your little pla--"

"Shut the fuck up," Ian interrupted angrily. He emptied an entire magazine into the shadows surrounding him. Bullets pierced the blackness just momentarily, before the little holes closed up again.

The darkness swirled, pressing in on all sides; it crawled around them, the ugly mouths grinning at the two of them. Ian gently squeezed Morgan's upper arm, and she gently shrugged him away.

"This place has begun to bore me," Fairchild said lazily. "I see no reason why it should continue to exist. I'm going to eat this world alive--swallow it up in my shadow and reduce it to utter _nothing_. Anything I don't like, I will destroy. Because there's no reason for it to be there otherwise."

"I suppose pointing out the beauty of life, love, art, and such would be pointless," Sailor Epsilon said impatiently. "So I won't bother, if it's all the same to you. _Pulsar Missile_!"

Screaming, burning-red metal carving up the darkness, revealing the stars beyond. The ragged, smoldering edges of Fairchild's body fluttered and flapped in the desert wind, then pulled themselves back together, resolving itself into a shadow that staked itself into the ground. Beneath her feet, the sandstone rumbled and cracked. A slimy tendril slid across her face, and awful, jagged yellow teeth were bared at her face.

"It's _all_ pointless," Fairchild said. His voice sounded less and less human, it didn't even sound like he was speaking anything remotely resembling English anymore, but somehow, Morgan understood. She shook her head, trying to force the noise out of her mind; it made her head hurt, but no, she couldn't focus on that right now, right now, she had to focus on this. "You might as well give up immediately. I won't promise you a place as a princess or a free life in a new world, but I can promise you a swift death. Fighting back will only be postponing the inevitable."

The ground beneath her began cracking and crumbling; claws and tendrils shot up out of the ground, pulling cars and trees and cactus beneath, crushing them in Fairchild's iron grip.

He was beginning to tear the world apart.

She couldn't respond, because a mass of black tendrils wrapped around her neck; they lifted her into the air, choking her and letting her hang limply in the air. Her gun dropped to the ground, and she grunted and pulled at the tendrils with her white-gloved hands, ripping several apart; as soon as she had, though, several more were generated in their place, stronger than before. Losing air. Dizzy. Stars danced in front of her eyes, and she choked and gagged as the grip tightened around her throat. Morgan tried to think of something to do. So far, the gun hadn't worked. Obviously, this required a bit more finesse. But she was finding it hard to think straight, or even think at all, right now, what with her air being cut off and everything. She gagged and pulled at the tendrils again, and again, they grew back. Ian rushed to her side and began sawing at them with his pocket-knife. He was panting, scared, panicking, whimpering softly as he tried to cut her free. She squealed, trying to warn him of--

An enormous black claw shot out of the grinning shadow, gripping him around the midsection and hurling him across the sandy lot like a rag doll, where he landed up against a blue Civic. He tried to get back up off of the ground, then flopped back over, still.

"One down," Fairchild said pleasantly. "Wouldn't you like to join your friend in death?"

She murmured some nonsense, a choked response, that Ian was not dead, because Ian was so tough that, should death ever come for him, he would kick the Reaper up the ass and advise him to come back later. She believed in him. He wasn't dead. No way in hell.

But since she was in the midst of being strangled/hung, she couldn't articulate this very well. Nevertheless, the golden feeling flared up again, burning through her veins…

"Oh, I assure you, he is. Or will be very shortly. You see, I may have just broken his spine by tossing him away like that. His death will be most agonizing. Don't you want to join him?"

Morgan snarled--an alien sound from such a mousy, neurotic woman. Yellow, warm light blazed forth from her fists, which were tightly clenched around a cluster of the strangling tendrils; they burned away, flopping to the ground uselessly, and she landed on the ground again gracelessly, scraping up both of her legs. Behind her slightly-askew glasses, her eyes burned with a fire that hadn't been there before. She didn't say a word. She seized her gun, and it, too, was bathed in the yellow light. It sparkled in the moonlight for a moment, then it _changed_--from a cold gray to a warm golden color, from something resembling a miniature Vulcan cannon to something more like an Avenger. Golden fire crackled around her as she effortlessly raised the enormous gun.

"You hurt my best friend," she said.

"That's selfish, isn't it?" Fairchild said cheerily. "I've started chewing off bits and pieces of your world already. I'm going to hollow it out, then crush it like a grape. But here you are just worrying about one man. One insignificant man."

"I don't know much about the world," she said quietly. "All I know is my own pointless, insignificant existence. I know failure. I know loneliness. But now… because I've gotten to know Mr Moffat… I've figured something else out. I've figured out that I'm sick of being a failure, sick of being nervous, and sick of being lonely. I'm going to make my pointless, insignificant existence meaningful!"

"Isn't that cute!" He laughed wildly, and it was the most insane sound she had ever heard in her entire life. It didn't scare her; at this point, it only angered her further. She was so tired of him, and of everything he had thrown at her--at Ian--at their city.

"On behalf of Mr Moffat, I would like to cordially invite you to, in his unfortunately rather crude words, _FUCK RIGHT OFF_!" she snapped. "_Genocide Sunshine_!"

Four-thousand-two-hundred rounds per minute. Golden-colored bullets, each as big as her forearm, exploded out of the Avenger, each detonating magnificently within his shadowy body, shearing his shapeless mass away into _nothing_. The desert was scorched; the air was burning, hazy with the heat of the strange ammunition. Through blurred, pain-doubled vision, she saw all of the tendrils and claws and spikes he had put through the ground disintegrating. Stone turned to dust. A couple of cars that had been parked behind Fairchild at the time were melted.

It was hot out here. No, not out here. In here. There. The warmth in her chest threatened to bubble over--that soft, golden feeling that had been around for months now. That weird feeling--feeling of… power? Maybe?

The metal screamed and chattered for two minutes, until he was gone, completely. Not even ash remained; not even smoke; not even vapor.

She stood in a smoking crater of her own making, puffing and panting. Her head hurt, and her chest was searing with that painful white-hot feeling. Morgan tried to push it out of her mind, taking a deep breath, focusing hard, trying to reach out with that psychic trick she had tried during the phobia-gas incident weeks ago, trying to feel whether he was there or not.

But there was nothing of him left.

Beyond the edges of her own mind, she could feel the bare edges of Ian's. that was all. Nobody else.

Ian.

She clumsily limped over to him, dragging her Avenger on the ground. Tired as she was, she couldn't even lift it out of the crater that she had created; she just dragged it--and herself--up onto higher ground and over to the Civic, where her friend stood, calmly smoking a cigarette. The forcefield that she had covered him with glittered weakly in the moonlight; it had gone patchy… fading away on its own.

"Ian!" she said. Forgetting the burning in her body for just a fraction of a second, forgetting her perpetual case of nerves, forgetting how unladylike it was to do so, forgetting everything, she tackled him, hugging him, burying her head in the crook of his neck. He was alive! Alive! She hadn't ever been this happy to see someone before in her entire life. Her heart pounded, warmth bubbling through her whole body again.

"Okay, hey, calm down, Jesus," he said, confused.

"I was worried!"

"Nothing to worry about. I'm mostly fine. Got a few scrapes, and there's kind of a ringing in my ears, but other than that… I think your forcefield's defective or something."

She smiled faintly, enjoying the warm pulse that was surging through herself. It was familiar… good magic. At the same time, though… she couldn't help but feel some kind of strange… dunno… _inevitability_ hanging over her head. The feeling that she was going to die hadn't gone away, despite both of her major enemies having been defeated tonight.

"Defective?"

"Yeah. Keeps flickering on and off. Saved me from mortal injury, sure, but it scuffed up my face and arms a bit."

Why was that? All of her forcefields up until now had been great--protecting him from zombies, phobia-gas, real serious stuff. Now, though…

She looked down at the ground, leaning against her Avenger for support, intending to puzzle this out, but all of a sudden, she realized something.

The little crystal that she used to change into Sailor Epsilon had changed.

First, it had been clear as glass, back when she first picked it up.

But now, it was a beautiful amber or topaz color--a rich golden-yellow. And it seemed to twitch slightly, in rhythm with her heartbeat--in rhythm with the warmth that pulsed through her. It glowed softly, illuminating the space between her and Ian.

"Ian?" she said quietly. In the surface of the crystal, her face was reflected in miniature. She closed her soft-gray eyes. When she did, she saw a new world.

_Her _newworld.

She knew its name immediately--Antares.

Soon, Morgan would no longer be Sailor Epsilon--instead, she would become Sailor Antares.

She opened her eyes again and looked up at her friend dolefully, then glanced around at the desert of the old world. She felt as though she were floating away from it, disconnected.

She knew.

"Huh?"

"I don't think I'm going to be Sailor Epsilon anymore."

"What? What the fuck's that supposed to mean? You quittin' on me, girly?"

"No, sir. It's just… I don't think I can explain it. Except… I think I'm… changing."

"How?" His voice was getting high-pitched with alarm--something she had never expected of him. He was always so calm and collected. In everything else that had happened, his voice had been steady and confident. How strange.

Morgan didn't answer him. She wasn't a terribly imaginative woman; she couldn't think of any way to explain it, because she barely understood it herself. The man grabbed her by the upper arm and shook her a little.

"Morgan, how? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Again, no answer. She closed her eyes, looked at her new world again… then opened her eyes, stood up on tiptoe, and clumsily kissed Ian on the cheek.

"I don't think I have long here, Ian. May I please have a hug?"

"Not until you tell me what the ever-loving fuck is going on!" he demanded.

"I don't know!" she cried. "Except I'm changing!"

For a moment, they stared at each other, both upset, frightened, a little bit angry.

Finally, though, Ian hugged Morgan, just as she'd requested, and they stood there awhile, silent and still.

Then Morgan groaned, clutching at her chest again, and stumbled away slightly, trying to prop herself up with the Avenger again. She closed her eyes tightly and saw her new world once again--this time, it was accompanied by a sensation of floating, of being pulled away--of fading. The ribbons and skirt on her costume were glowing white, fluttering as if being blown in a breeze.

Morgan looked up at the dark sky.

"I don't want to go," she mumbled.

The glow on her costume intensified, then flashed, nova-bright, in the night air, illuminating the desert around them with a sun-like glow. Ian shielded his eyes with his hand, squinting, trying to see what was going on, but found himself blinded momentarily.

Sailor Antares floated before him, several inches off of the ground, holding her golden gun with both hands.

Her costume was much the same as the Sailor Epsilon one, save for the color scheme; her collar, the ends of her gloves, and her skirt were a sunny-yellow, and the ribbons on her back and on her chest were a cheery soft-orange, as were her tennis shoes. The little clear crystal that had pinned back the ribbon on her chest was a beautiful, richly-colored topaz.

She didn't say anything. She wasn't creative enough to think up some clever, soul-stirring speech to sum up her adventures and how she felt about all this madness. If she had tried to speak, she would have only wound up crying. At the very least, she could try to retain some dignity.

Instead, she reached up with one hand and untied her hair ribbon, floating forward and pressing it into Ian's hand.

Understanding, the man took the police badge off of his uniform and pinned it to hers.

"Remember that," he said, his voice sounding rather croaky.

The two squeezed hands briefly--and then Sailor Antares faded away into the night, smiling faintly, mouthing unknown words.


	12. Someday Shine Together

_**Someday - Shine Together**_

Overall, he was handling the demotion as well as could be hoped.

Moffat was a simple traffic cop now--handling crosswalks in front of schools and occasionally ticketing people that parked in the wrong spaces. Mrs Ruiz didn't trust him to handle bigger duties anymore, and had been RIGHT on the edge of firing him altogether, but at the last minute, someone had intervened and he had simply been demoted.

It didn't bother him as much these days.

He had a new night job anyway.

At night he would walk around the city as far as his feet would carry him, simply looking--looking out of the corner of his eye. Sometimes, he could see things, dancing at the edge of his vision. Ghosts, perhaps, or demons. Whatever they were, he took care of them. He had to protect his town any way he could… now that Morgan wasn't there to do it anymore.

He missed her, so much that it made his heart ache a little bit.

He hadn't had many friends before all this insanity, and he had even less now. No one wanted to be associated with the crazy dude that spent his nights and weekends hunting things that they couldn't--wouldn't?--see.

It was still important work, work that had to be done no matter what, he realized. But it just wasn't quite as fun without Morgan around. It was nice having a friend in the midst of such chaos. It didn't make it any easier or anything. It was just… nice.

He kept hoping that, someday, he would glance out of the corner of his eye and see a cute sailor-girly in yellow, carrying a golden gun; he kept hoping that she would come back and hug him or smile at him and speak to him one last time.

He didn't know if she ever would, but he could certainly hope.

Sometimes he pondered writing it all down and putting it on a blog, sending it into the newspaper, something like that. But he couldn't do any of their adventures justice; he didn't know how to begin to describe or explain them.

But he did tell the stories sometimes.

Although Ian Moffat never had children of his own, he would often tell his nieces and nephews (and later on, their children), who would often ask where the yellow ribbon he always wore around his wrist came from. He would share stories of the heroic woman he had once known, and he would smile peacefully, gently, while he spoke of her.

She was kinda neurotic, but she was a good woman.

Life went on.

The world continued to spin.

She wasn't there.

But wherever she was now, he knew she was doing okay.

Some nights, he looked at the sky, and thought, not of Sailor Antares, or Sailor Epsilon, but of Morgan, and wondered if she looked at the alien sky wherever she was, and thought of him.


End file.
